Becerra squeaks through confirmation vote to become HHS secretary
Source: Washington Post
Xavier Becerra narrowly won confirmation Thursday to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, the agency pivotal to President Biden’s urgent goal of defeating the coronavirus pandemic and expanding access to health care. Becerra, a congressman from Los Angeles for two dozen years and then California attorney general, squeaked by on a vote of 50 to 49, the closest margin for any of the Biden cabinet members the Senate has confirmed so far.
He becomes the first Latino secretary of HHS, the largest federal department in terms of spending. The department includes agencies at the core of the federal response to the pandemic that has infected more than 29.5 million people in the United States and killed more than 535,000. They include the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the vaccine-approving Food and Drug Administration, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which oversees the country’s vast public insurance programs.
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, which considered the nomination, said that “after four years of going in reverse,” Becerra will make it “possible to go to drive and actually make progress for the American people, progress in terms of lowering the cost of health care.” Republican Sen. John Barrasso (Wyo.), countered that Becerra is “an aggressive culture warrior from the radical left,” who is “out of touch with the views of the American people.” Barrasso noted that, as state attorney general, Becerra sued the Trump administration more than 150 times over immigration, environmental and health policies.
“In this time of crisis, our secretary of Health and Human Services may be the single most important member of the president’s cabinet,” Barrasso said, contending that “the president has chosen a nominee, no public health experience, extremely partisan record.” Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) was the only member of the GOP to vote for Becerra’s confirmation along with a solid wall of Senate Democrats.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/becerra-squeaks-through-confirmation-vote-to-become-hhs-secretary/2021/03/18/cd11bac4-8750-11eb-8a8b-5cf82c3dffe4_story.html?arc404=true
Finally.
= new reply since forum marked as read
otherwise Harris would have had to break the tie but... yes I suppose you can call that "bipartisan". 
(as a now-retired employee of them )
(which I suppose DU is part of... 
)
but glad it helped to get him confirmed so HHS can get a handle on the damage that was done to the Department. 
that hosts Darth and has more cattle than people.
They are afraid because he is a lawyer (and former AG) who would have the type of background needed to thwart their continual attacks against the ACA.
at least it works for me! 
but I think they tried and the GOP is so stubbornly "anti-mask" and were making such a fuss that they decided (at least for now) to move on from changing that rule since the party split is so close.
There are also about 1/4 of the number in the Senate when compared to the House, so it made the most sense that the House did what they did with proxy voting since it would be a nightmare with 435 of them in there at once (and we know they already had a super-spreader event happen with the few that did show up and were exposed to infected GOP non-maskers in their "secure location" during the insurrection 
).