Both choices mark the completion of Biden’s announcements for those nominated for his cabinet secretary, and occur less than two weeks after the inauguration of the president-elect.
Biden praised the diversity and historic firsts in his office, and said he kept his promise to have his office look like America.
“This will be the first Cabinet ever composed equally with as many women as men in the Cabinet. This will be the first Cabinet with the majority of people of color occupying this Cabinet,” said the President-elect. He noted that his nominees would include, if confirmed, the first female secretary of the Treasury, the first African-American secretary of defense, and the first Native American cabinet secretary.
Biden spoke about the challenges his government will face when he takes office in the midst of a pandemic and economic crisis, when so many Americans have lost their jobs and are in financial difficulty.
Biden said his government would prioritize distributing emergency economic aid to “small businesses on Main Street who are not rich and well connected, who are facing real economic difficulties, but not through their own fault.” He said he would focus on supporting blacks, Latinos, Asians, Native Americans and small businesses for women.
The president-elect emphasized that Americans and small businesses struggling in the pandemic need immediate and direct economic aid, including $ 2,000 stimulus checks.
“$ 600 is simply not enough when you have to choose between paying rent, putting food on the table, keeping the lights on,” said Biden of the stimulus checks that were recently approved by Congress.
He sympathized with Americans across the country who lost their jobs and are now forced to line up at food banks to feed their families. He stressed that the difference between white unemployment and black and Latino unemployment “remains very large”.
In the wake of the two Democratic victories in the US Senate in Georgia, the president-elect said he hoped that the fact that Democrats control the House and Senate would increase changes in the minimum wage increase.
Biden also announced on Friday Isabel Guzman, director of the California Office of the Small Business Advocate, to lead the Small Business Administration and Don Graves, who was the executive director of the President of the Council on Jobs and Competitiveness at the Obama White House, as his nominee for deputy secretary of commerce.
Walsh is a veteran trade unionist and has ascended the leadership of the Boston Building and Construction Trade Council, a group representing blacksmiths and electricians unions, among others. Walsh has served as mayor of Boston since 2013, and it was rumored that it would be a potential job choice in 2016 if Hillary Clinton had won the presidency. Walsh’s choice is a victory for AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka, who brought together his federation of 56 unions to support Boston’s mayor shortly after Biden won the election.
Guzman is the director of the California Office of the Small Business Advocate, a government office that works to support and develop small businesses in the most populous state in the United States. Prior to assuming the state post, Guzman was deputy chief of staff and senior advisor to the United States Small Business Administration, the office she will now lead.
Graves served at the Obama White House as executive director of the President’s Jobs and Competitiveness Council and as assistant deputy secretary for small business, community development and housing policy in the U.S. Department of the Treasury. Graves was previously a partner at Graves, Horton, Askew & Johns, LLC. He was the former director of public policy for the business roundtable and was previously a policy advisor to the Department of Home Finance in the US Department of the Treasury.
Biden on Thursday criticized the police for his different treatment of the pro-Trump crowd and Black Lives Matter protesters during demonstrations last year. The day before, he said the riots in the United States Capitol represented an “unprecedented attack” on United States democracy and asked Trump to immediately go on national television and “demand an end to this siege”.
CNN’s Greg Krieg and Dan Merica contributed to this report.