President Joe Biden renominated Lisa M. Gomez Tuesday as assistant secretary of labor for the Employee Benefits Security Administration.
Ms. Gomez, a partner at law firm Cohen, Weiss and Simon and the chairwoman of its management committee, was initially nominated in July and advanced out of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee in December in a 12-10 vote. However, her nomination, along with dozens of others, was sent back to the White House just prior to Congress' holiday recess last month. The recess marked the end of the 117th Congress' first session; its second session began Monday. Procedurally, the White House had to renominate Ms. Gomez, which it did Tuesday along with a slew of other nominees, because a new session began.
The Senate HELP Committee announced a Jan. 12 hearing to consider Ms. Gomez's nomination along with other nominees in a similar procedural situation. Ms. Gomez will not have to testify before the committee again; she originally did so in October. The hearing was initially scheduled for Wednesday, but was pushed back to Jan. 12. "Due to a number of scheduling and logistical changes, Chair (Patty) Murray, (D-Wash.) worked with Ranking Member (Richard) Burr (R-N.C.) to reschedule the mark-up as quickly as possible," a Democratic committee aide said in a statement.
Once approved by the committee, Ms. Gomez's nomination will once again head to the full Senate. Leading up to its holiday recess, the Senate faced a backlog of nominations mostly due to a slew of ambassador holdups, which left fewer legislative days to consider pending nominees, like Ms. Gomez.
Ali Khawar has been leading EBSA as acting assistant secretary. If Ms. Gomez is confirmed, Mr. Khawar would retain his other position as principal deputy assistant secretary.