Over at The New Republic, John Judis argues that Labor is proving a low priority for the Obama administration. The choice of Hilda Solis for Secretary of Labor is a good one, he writes, but "these were his very last cabinet picks, and they came after second level White House aides and agency heads. The order of picking means something. It was no accident that Obama introduced his economic and his national security team first." He also argues that Hilda Solis, though an admirable person, was a second-tier House member. She's not a proven political heavyweight by any stretch of the imagination. "If you think these are important jobs, what you want is someone of national standing who can sell your and their program to the public and to Congress--and particularly to the Senate, where the Democrats are going to need 60 votes on some key issues," says Judis. I'd add that the Secretary of Labor could have been named as part of the economic team, sending the message that Obama believed a strong union movement an integral element of a strong economy. That would have made her a heavyweight. But he didn't do that, either. Today at Tapped, Tim Fernholz responds. Noting that Joe Biden was just named chair of a new White House Task Force on Working Families, Fernholz asks, "Did the VP just become labor czar? And if you were going to pick someone to find 60 votes for EFCA in the Senate, wouldn't you want that person to be Joe Biden?" I think this conflates "middle class" with labor, and "labor" with "Labor." Judis didn't argue that Obama was insufficiently concerned with working families. The economic team, which came first, was aimed at working families, as they need a healthy economy. So too was the health care team. And so too is Biden's new venture, which will be tasked with "raising the living standards of middle-class, working families in America." The task force has no formal power, and the press release says that the president's goals for it are "Expanding education and lifelong training opportunities, Improving work and family balance, Restoring labor standards, including workplace safety, Helping to protect middle-class and working-family incomes, and Protecting retirement security." There's no formal mention of big-L Labor. That doesn't mean Biden cannot prove a potent force. If he ends up walking the halls of Congress whipping votes for EFCA, that would be a ringing rejection of Judis's claim. If his support of Labor's agenda is limited to the occasional encouraging comment, rather than the application of political capital, that will be confirmation of Judis's anxieties. But the fact that he'll chair a task force charged with producing a report on raising middle class wages -- a report that may suggest strengthening unions, but will not be focused on the issue -- isn't evidence one way or the other. You can do a lot to strengthen the middle class without doing anything to strengthen unions, and the worry among some is that that's Obama's preferred approach.
