Both Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), two key centrists, said they would support Xavier Becerra\u2019s nomination for secretary of Health and Human Services on Thursday, paving the way to his confirmation, likely next week.<\/p>\n
Collins said she decided to vote to confirm Becerra after several conversations with him on a range of issues, including lowering prescription drug costs and expanding health care access to rural areas across the country. She is the first Republican to come out in support of his confirmation.<\/p>\n
\u201cDuring our one-on-one meeting, and in three subsequent conversations, Mr. Becerra and I discussed several shared goals that I hope we can accomplish in the Biden Administration. They include lowering the price of prescription drugs for patients and reducing our dependence on foreign countries for drug manufacturing,” she said in a statement. “I also urged Mr. Becerra to support additional funding for health care providers during the pandemic, particularly in rural areas.”<\/p>\n
While the Maine Republican recognized she and Becerra have \u201cdisagreements\u201d on a number of issues, she said she concluded that \u201che merits confirmation as HHS Secretary.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Manchin\u2019s part, he said:\u00a0\u201cWhile Attorney General Xavier Becerra and I have very different records on issues like abortion and the Second Amendment, he has affirmed to me his dedication to working with members on both sides of the aisle to address the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and the numerous needs of our nation in a bipartisan way.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Both Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-u-s-a"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32749","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=32749"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32749\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32750,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32749\/revisions\/32750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}