The two choices are the completion of Biden’s announcements for his cabinet secretary nominees and come less than two weeks after the president’s inauguration.
Biden considers the variety and historic firsts in his cabinet and says he has kept his promise to make his cabinet look like America.
“This will be the first cabinet ever to be composed evenly with as many women as men in the cabinet. It will be the first cabinet ever with the majority of coloreds occupying this cabinet,” the president-elect said. He noted that his nominees would include the first female treasurer, the first African-American defense secretary, and the first Indian cabinet secretary.
Biden spoke about the challenges his government will face when it takes office amid a pandemic and economic downturn, when so many Americans have lost their jobs and are struggling financially.
Biden said his government would prefer to distribute first aid to “small businesses in Main Street that are not rich and well connected and that are experiencing real economic problems without any fault of their own.” He said he would focus on supporting black, Latino, Asian, Native Americans and small businesses owned by women.
The president-elect emphasizes that Americans and small businesses struggling amid the pandemic need immediate and immediate economic relief, including $ 2,000 stimulus checks.
“$ 600 is simply not enough, if you have to choose between paying rent, putting food on the table, keeping the lights on,” Biden said of the incentives recently approved by Congress.
He sympathized with Americans across the country who had lost their jobs and are now being forced to queue at food banks to feed their families. He pointed out that the gap between white unemployment and black and Latino unemployment “remains much too large.”
In the wake of the two Democratic U.S. Senate victories in Georgia, the president-elect said he hopes the change to the minimum wage increase by Democrats will be controlled by both the House and Senate.
Biden also announced Friday that Isabel Guzman, California’s director of the Small Business Advocate’s office, would like the Small Business Administration and Don Graves, who was the executive director of the President’s Council on Employment and Competitiveness in the Obama White House to lead its leader. nominated for Deputy Secretary of Commerce.
Walsh is a veteran union and is the leader of Boston’s building and construction trade council, a group that includes ironworkers ‘and electricians’ unions, among others. Walsh has served as mayor of Boston since 2013, and he was a rumor of possible Labor election in 2016 if Hillary Clinton would win the presidency. Walsh’s election is a victory for AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, who convened his 56-union federation to support the mayor of Boston shortly after Biden won the election.
Guzman is the director of California’s Office of the Small Business Advocate, a government agency that works to support and grow small businesses in the U.S. population. Before Guzman took over the civil service, he was the deputy chief of staff and senior adviser to the U.S. Small Business Administration, the office she will now lead.
Graves served in the Obama White House as executive director of the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness and as deputy assistant secretary for small business, community development and housing policy at the U.S. Treasury Department. Graves was previously a partner with Graves, Horton, Askew & Johns, LLC. He was the former director of public policy for the round table and was previously policy adviser to the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Home Finance.
Biden on Thursday slammed police for their different treatment of the pro-Trump mob and Black Lives Matter protesters during protests last year. The previous day, he said the riots at the US Capitol amounted to an “unprecedented onslaught” on US democracy, and asked Trump to immediately go to national television and demand an end to this siege. ‘
CNN’s Greg Krieg and Dan Merica contributed to this report.