Aderholt Remarks at Budget Hearing for U.S. Department of Labor

Good morning, Secretary Chavez-DeRemer. I am pleased to welcome you to the Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education for a hearing on the Department of Labor’s Fiscal Year 2026 budget request. I congratulate you on your bi-partisan confirmation as Secretary and look forward to working with you. 

The role of the Department of Labor is to foster, promote, and develop the welfare of wage earners in the United States; to improve their working conditions; and to advance their opportunities for profitable employment. Unfortunately, under your predecessor, the agency too often exceeded its statutory authority and attempted to implement a regulatory agenda that—had it not been rejected by the American public in last year’s election—would have crippled American job creators and undermined the ability of American workers to secure the economic opportunities they need to support their families. 

Under your predecessor, the Department was more interested in catering to beltway-based, liberal social policy concerns, rather than responding to the real needs of American workers, job seekers, and employers. 

These misguided and harmful regulatory proposals included: an OHSA requirement that, if not found unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, would have required Americans to receive Covid-19 vaccinations as a prerequisite for employment; a wage and hour regulation that would have ended freelance and independent work opportunities, particularly important to workers with caregiving responsibilities, who value flexibility; and a change to overtime regulations that would have reduced worker opportunity for career advancement. 

More than four hundred and seventeen thousand small businesses in Alabama employ over 47 percent of private sector workers in the state. Many of the small businesses in my district are family farms. No industry suffered more under the harmful regulatory regime of the previous administration than American farmers because of the increase in the H2A Adverse Effect Wage Rates.  I look forward to working with your agency as well as USDA to address the AEWR, and supporting this vital industry going forward. 

President Trump’s election and your subsequent confirmation are a breath of fresh air for American workers and job creators. No longer will American businesses have to fear regulatory overreach or enforcement actions designed to punish employers and limit their success. 

Madam Secretary, while the Department’s regulatory matters are frequently contentious, we have often been able to find bipartisan common ground on skills training. 

Apprenticeships produce positive outcomes for workers and job seekers, prioritizing what should be the end goal of all workforce development programs—a job. These programs only exist where businesses choose to adopt this intensive approach to human capital management. We have seen support for these programs flourish under multiple administrations, and I hope we can continue to build out these opportunities. 

The Alabama Office of Apprenticeship was in part created to respond to employer frustration with the Department of Labor’s management of the Registered Apprenticeship program. These frustrations included a bureaucratic and outdated “one-size-fits all” approach to skills training with overly prescriptive requirements. Too often, under the previous administration, the Department of Labor showed favoritism in reviewing apprenticeship program applications and in the name of “equity and inclusion,” would have turned a two-page law into a seven hundred- and seventy-six-page rule that would have reduced opportunities for American workers of all races and both sexes. We should be ensuring that American workers and job seekers have direct access to career pathways that work for them, not adding 776 layers of Byzantine mazes to navigate.

Apprenticeships represent an opportunity and pathway to high paying jobs—unfortunately, the barriers to growth of this career training model will not be solved through funding alone. Improved program administration and more effective leadership at and by the Department can better support the adoption of Registered Apprenticeships for workers for our nation’s workforce. 

I am hopeful that as we work through this shortened budget year, we will be able to once again find common ground. 

I know the members of this Subcommittee look forward to hearing from our witness and asking questions about the budget and policies at the Department. I would like to yield to Ranking Member DeLauro, for her opening statement.