Becerra confirmed as new HHS secretary
Senate approves California’s attorney general to lead the department as Biden pushes health care goals.
The Senate on Thursday confirmed California Attorney General Xavier Becerra as President Joe Biden’s health secretary, filling a key position in the administration’s coronavirus response and its ambitious push to lower drug costs, expand insurance coverage, and eliminate racial disparities in medical care.
The 50-49 largely party-line vote makes the 63-year-old Becerra the first Latino to head the Department of Health and Human Services. The $1.4 trillion agency encompasses health insurance programs, drug safety and approvals, advanced medical research, substance abuse treatment, and the welfare of children, including hundreds of Central American migrants arriving daily at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Becerra has been California’s attorney general since 2017. He sued the Trump administration 124 times on a range of policy issues, earning the ire of conservatives. Before that he represented a Los Angeles-area district in the U.S. House for 24 years. A lawyer, not a doctor, his main experience with the health care system came through helping to pass the Obama-era Affordable Care Act and defending it when Donald Trump was president.
“I understand the enormous challenges before us and our solemn responsibility to be faithful stewards of an agency that touches almost every aspect of our lives,” Becerra said recently at his confirmation hearing. “I’m humbled by the task, and I’m ready for it.” He comes from a working-class Mexican American family; his father was in road construction and his mother was a secretary.
Leading Republicans have dismissed Becerra as unfit. But the American Medical Association and the American Hospital Association supported his nomination. Two influential lobbying groups, representing the drug industry and health insurers, said after the vote that they look forward to a collaborative working relationship.
But to Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, “the distinguishing feature of this nominee’s resume is not his expertise in health, medicine, or administration — that part of the resume is very brief. What stands out are Mr. Becerra’s commitment to partisan warfare and his far-left ideology.”
Becerra was reliably liberal in nearly a quartercentury in the House, but he was not seen as a leftwing firebrand. His issues were education, immigration and equal treatment for minorities. His profile was of a low-key insider who could work with Republicans.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said GOP arguments against Becerra “almost verge on the ridiculous.” Schumer said Republicans “complained loudly that he had no direct experience as a medical professional, even though Republicans voted in lockstep” to make pharmaceutical executive Alex Azar health secretary under President Donald Trump.
The Biden administration’s COVID-19 response is already in high gear, directed out of the White House. Biden has signed his $1.9 trillion relief bill into law and agencies are making announcements almost daily. But having a health secretary in the mix will make a big difference, said Kathleen Sebelius, who led HHS during much of President Barack Obama’s administration.
“Many of the assets that will be important to this effort are in HHS, and he’ll have the key coordinating role within the department,” Sebelius said. “It adds a force multiplier and expertise to the efforts already under way.”
Core components of HHS are the boots on the ground of the coronavirus response.
The Food and Drug Administration oversees vaccines and treatments. Much of the underlying scientific and medical research comes from the National Institutes of Health.