Lori Chavez-DeRemer. Credit: DeRemer
President Donald Trump's nominee to be the Labor secretary, Lori Chavez-DeRemer, today received approval from the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.
Committee members endorsed her by a 13-9 vote.
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Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., crossed party lines to vote against her. He objected to her nomination because of her past support of the Protecting the Right to Organize Act bill, a labor rules bill that could have classified many benefits professionals who now think of themselves as self-employed as insurance company or insurance agency employees.
The committee chairman, Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., had expressed concerns about Chavez-DeRemer's support for the PRO Act bill but ended up voting for her.
Chavez-DeRemer "committed to protecting independent workers and their flexibility to earn a living in this manner in the manner in which they choose," Cassidy said during the meeting on the nomination vote.
Related: Trump's Labor secretary nominee faces job training, pension questions at Senate hearing
Three Democrats — Sen. Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, Sen. John Hickenlooper of Colorado and Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia — voted for Chavez-DeRemer.
The Chavez-DeRemer nomination now heads to the Senate floor.
Chavez-DeRemer is an Oregon resident who represented Oregon in the House, as a Republican, in the previous Congress and then lost her re-election race. While she was in the House, she introduced the Health Data Access, Transparency and Affordability Act bill, or Health DATA Act bill, which would require pharmacy benefit managers, plan administrators and plan provider networks to offer the fiduciaries of employer-sponsored health plans access to the -identified claim information they could use to audit claims and cost information.
If confirmed as Labor secretary, she would help implement and enforce benefits laws such as the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act and the Affordable Care Act.
She would oversee the administrator of the Employee Benefits Security Administration, the Labor Department agency that handles most employee benefits issues.
Trump has nominated Daniel Aronowitz, an ERISA law expert and president of Encore Fiduciary, an issuer of liability insurance for benefit plan fiduciaries, to be an assistant Labor secretary and EBSA administrator.
Senate HELP has jurisdiction over the Aronowitz nomination but at press time had not yet scheduled his nomination hearing.
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Allison Bell
Allison Bell, a senior reporter at ThinkAdvisor and BenefitsPRO, previously was an associate editor at National Underwriter Life & Health. She has a bachelor's degree in economics from Washington University in St. Louis and a master's degree in journalism from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. She can be reached through X at @Think_Allison.
