Confirm Xavier Becerra as Secretary of HHS…Now!

Every aspect of the lives of children and families are being negatively impacted by this global pandemic and economic recession. Our kids are NOT alright.

To ensure the full needs of our children are addressed as our nation attempts to “Build Back Better,” we need a Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that understands the full-array of challenges and issues facing our nation’s children and families.

That person is Xavier Becerra.

Over the years, I have had the pleasure of working with Xavier Becerra and his staff on issues related to health care coverage, public health, child and family poverty, early childhood, foster care and child welfare, and immigration. This included overarching top-line issues, such as health care reform, to thinking through the details on how systems should come together, such as how electronic medical records could better serve and protect children in the foster care system.

Any secretary of HHS must obviously understand health care policy, which Becerra does, but also the “Human Services” part of the HHS title and how these systems all work together. For our nation’s children and families, it is the totality of HHS that makes the department arguably the most important federal agency that serves children and families. Becerra understands in a way few previous HHS secretaries have.

During his tenure in Congress, Becerra was a Champion for Children in 2011, 2012, and 2013 and a Defender for Children in 2014, as measured by the First Focus Campaign for Children (FFCC) Legislative Scorecard. Only a fraction of Members of Congress qualify for these awards, but Rep. Becerra qualified four separate years for his votes and his leadership in sponsoring or cosponsoring bills of importance to children and families in Congress across a full array of issues.

We witnessed his leadership, knowledge, and the value that he placed on making the world a better place for children during that period, but there is no doubt that he would have qualified many more times if FFCC had started the Legislative Scorecard earlier than 2011. I know this from personal experience, as I worked with and observed his efforts to protect children on a number of issues during my time on Capitol Hill and as President of First Focus on Children. The fact is that Xavier Becerra has always been a champion for children and families.

First, from his upbringing, Becerra understands why it is important to help our nation’s children obtain the support they need to succeed in this country. He grew up in a working class California family whose father worked the fields and in construction to build roads. His mother who came to this country from Mexico at the age of 18. Becerra was the first of his family to graduate from college, earning two degrees from the prestigious Stanford University, which is where he met his wife, Dr. Carolina Reyes.

Becerra understands that our children stand at a crossroads.

After two full decades of progress, the number of uninsured children has been rising for four consecutive years. Becerra has been working on these issues for decades, as he helped lead the fight against House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s efforts to block grant Medicaid and child nutrition programs back in the mid-1990s, worked to protect the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) from expiring after it was vetoed twice by President George W. Bush in 2007, and served as the lead defender of the Affordable Care Act in his role as California’s Attorney General in the lawsuit pending before the Supreme Court. He is fully prepared to lead the way to get our health system back on track to ensuring all Americans, including our children, have the health care coverage they need.

In addition, child suicide rates are skyrocketing in this country. Fortunately, Becerra worked in Congress to pass mental health parity and enforced both the federal law and California’s mental health parity law as Attorney General.

As Becerra said:

It is the job, mandated by the law, of health insurance providers to make access to care for mental health conditions as accessible as care for a medical illness. Now, when people are seeing their mental health worsen as they navigate the COVID-19 pandemic, is a critical time to ensure those who need it have access to care.

Becerra has also taken on other important issues of importance to child health, including taking on the tobacco and vaping companies and the opioid manufacturers to protect the health and well-being of our nation’s children and families. We need that type of leadership at the helm of HHS.

Children are also facing a moment in which child poverty is rising rapidly due to the pandemic and economic recession. Even before these tragic circumstances, the U.S. child poverty rate stood “far above” the average for “weathy and middle-income countries that belong to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.” The solution to child poverty is multi-faceted, which is something that Becerra understands. His confirmation to the Biden-Harris Cabinet would enable him to work closely with others across the federal government and in Congress to fulfill the President’s commitment to cut child poverty in half. This would be the most significant policy development for children since the passage of CHIP and the Child Tax Credit itself back in the 1990s.

Finally, I grew up in El Paso, Texas, along the U.S.-Mexico border, and am appalled and horrified by the policies of family separation, kids in cages, and purposeful “cruelty toward children” that were imposed by the previous Administration. At HHS, Becerra would oversee the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) and he is best positioned to ensure that our country never, ever treats children and families like this again. Becerra, in fact, has led the effort to require the government to live up to its promise of protecting the safety and well-being children in its care.

As Becerra said:

All children deserve to be treated with care and compassion, certainly with dignity and respect.

Yes they do — now, more than ever.

And it is that kind of commitment to our children that we desperately need as the Secretary of HHS now. The Senate should immediately confirm Xavier Becerra as Secretary of HHS.