{"id":31968,"date":"2021-02-23T17:54:24","date_gmt":"2021-02-24T01:54:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=31968"},"modified":"2021-02-23T17:54:24","modified_gmt":"2021-02-24T01:54:24","slug":"biden-health-nominee-faces-first-senate-test","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=31968","title":{"rendered":"Biden health nominee faces first Senate test"},"content":{"rendered":"

President Biden\u2019s nominee to lead the massive federal health agency faced his first hearing in the Senate on Tuesday, with some Republicans indicating he doesn\u2019t have the experience necessary for the job but others appearing to leave the door open to supporting him.<\/p>\n

Some Senate Republicans and outside conservative groups have ramped up criticism of\u00a0Xavier Becerra\u00a0in the days leading up to his confirmation hearing, arguing he is an extremist who has no health care experience, making him unqualified to lead the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not sure that you have the necessary experience or skills to do this job at this moment,\u201d said Sen.\u00a0Richard Burr<\/a>\u00a0(N.C.), the top Republican on the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, adding that he would keep an open mind.<\/p>\n

Why it matters:\u00a0<\/strong>While the committee will not vote on Becerra’s confirmation \u2014 the Senate Finance committee will \u2014 some of the members\u2019 support will be crucial for his nomination to pass the Senate.<\/p>\n

Becerra must win the support of all 50 Senate Democrats to be confirmed by the Senate if he doesn\u2019t get any votes from Republicans and Vice President Harris breaks a tie.<\/p>\n

But eyes are also on moderate Republicans who have supported some of Biden\u2019s other nominees, given the tight majority Democrats have in the Senate.<\/p>\n

Sen.\u00a0Mitt Romney\u00a0(R-Utah) told Becerra on Tuesday, \u201cI think we can reach common ground on many issues\u201d except for abortion, but also didn\u2019t indicate if he would support his nomination.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

President Biden\u2019s nominee to lead the...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health","category-u-s-a"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31968"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31968\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31969,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31968\/revisions\/31969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}