Sen. Cotton: Becerra Should Not Be Confirmed as HHS Secretary

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra should not be confirmed as Health and Human Services Secretary because he has "no relevant experience and has been a politician" his whole life, Sen. Tom Cotton said Tuesday. 

"He has not been a doctor, or a dean of a public health school, or a pharmaceutical executive," the Arkansas Republican said on Fox News's "America Reports."

"Joe Biden needs to send a nominee that knows something like public health in the middle of a pandemic...he has been the architect of (Gov.) Gavin Newsom's lockdowns, which have put small businesses out of business despite the clear science to the contrary."

In addition, Cotton said Becerra wants to eliminate workplace healthcare. If confirmed, Becerra would be in charge of "Medicare and Medicaid and Obamacare," the senator added, and he's worried "that he will use those programs to try to take away your health insurance on the job."

Also, Becerra is a "zealot on abortion," would not admit he wouldn't want to use taxpayer money to fund abortion, and "refused to say that he opposed gruesome practices like partial-birth abortion," said Cotton. 

Cotton also spoke out against Democrats' proposed COVID-relief bill, pointing out that there are many earmarks that will bring back wasteful spending. 

"(Speaker) Nancy Pelosi will get (her money) for mass transit in San Francisco and (Senate Majority Leader) Chuck Schumer will get his bridge to nowhere from New York into Canada," said Cotton, and the bill spends "a lot more money that is not necessary."

"I feel like the Democrats are living two or three months in the past," said Cotton.

"Over the last seven or eight weeks, cases have plummeted in the country. Now open to 50 million people vaccinated by the end of March probably well over a third of the population has either been vaccinated or exposed to the virus and has natural immunity...we are on the verge of turning the corner and getting back to something very much like normal in a matter of weeks, not months. This money is just fulfilling a lot of Democrat wishes."

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