Acosta to defend Trump's plan to cut anti-bias office
WASHINGTON — Labor Secretary Alex Acosta is defending a White House spending plan that would cut the government’s policing of workforce civil rights laws.
Acosta is expected to face questions today from a House panel considering Congress’ proposal to fund the budget. Democrats said they planned to press him about Trump’s proposal to cut and merge two agencies — without providing additional funding — that police discrimination cases in the workforce.
Like most presidents’ spending plans, Trump’s looks headed for the political graveyard. But presidential budget proposals are statements of priorities. And Democrats and civil rights activists say Trump’s proposal to cut civil rights enforcement in the departments of labor and education as well as the Environmental Protection Agency point to an effort to water down the decades of laws that set the government’s role fighting discrimination.
“This administration is looking at civil rights broadly and dismantling anti-bias offices,” said Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, one of the Democrats on the House panel hearing from Acosta. “You’ve got a whole lot of efforts being made well under the radar.”
The administration has depicted all of the cuts as a way to save taxpayer money as Trump seeks to shrink the federal government.
Trump wants to merge the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission with a lesser-known agency that also enforces laws on equality in the workplace. Armed with subpoena power, the EEOC is an independent agency that investigates discrimination complaints against private businesses. The second agency polices discrimination among federal contractors. The administration contends that combining the two would reduce duplication by offering “one door” for workers to bring discrimination complaints.
The proposal has made rare allies of advocates for workers and employers, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, who fear it would create something of a super enforcement agency with overwhelming powers.
“If you take these two agencies and put them together, the concern is you’d have a perfect storm, a nightmare scenario for employers going forward,” said Mickey Silberman, who defends employers and contractors in government investigations for the law firm Jackson Lewis P.C. in Denver.
But workers’ rights organizations predict the opposite would happen, viewing Trump’s new combined agency as a way to make enforcement so onerous it happens less effectively.
