Elaine Chao
Nan Gorman was born in Memphis, Tenn., on St. Patrick's Day. She moved to Hazard in 1929 when her father, James Hagan, a recent medical school graduate and aspiring surgeon, went to work there.Collection: Medical
Activists have every right to espouse their views of utopia.
Never far from my thoughts are memories of being a little girl in Queens, N.Y., our family of five crowded in a small one-bedroom apartment, struggling to learn English and survive a new life in a new country, America. We humbly and gratefully still recall the kindnesses shown by strangers and neighbors who became new friends.
Most private sector workers can only dream of getting the generous lifetime pension and health benefits typical of government service.
To maintain their own competitiveness, workers need to attain and stay current on the qualifications needed to advance in a constantly evolving economy.
When my mother, sisters and I arrived on the shores of America when I was 8 years old, the boat on which we came, a freighter, passed the Statue of Liberty.
As I looked up at the Statue of Liberty, I thought at that time, 'What a wonderful country.'
Even when America's economy has been by all measures healthy and the unemployment rate low, some businesses suffer or fail and lay off workers. But nearly always, a simultaneous and even greater burst of new jobs has been created to offset the jobs lost - millions of new jobs every year.
The greatest job creation is driven by entrepreneurs and young businesses, so they merit special attention.
Consider trade protectionism. It's been tried - and found wanting - since the Great Depression.
We have many rules and regulations that can be sometimes confusing and complicated. By reaching out to the employer community and educating them on what their responsibilities and obligations are to their work force, that, along, with strong enforcement, is the best way to protect workers.
I'm the first secretary of labor in the 21st century, and the competitiveness of the American work force and the modernization of decades-old regulations have been among our top priorities.
My husband has an outstanding record in promoting opportunity for women and the women that he surrounds himself in his staff and the women that he has promoted throughout his career. He's the father of three daughters. He's obviously a husband who's been very supportive of a very active wife with her own career.
Our country needs to produce 250,000 net new jobs every month just to keep even with population growth.
If we did not have Obamacare, we could've addressed the healthcare crisis in a comprehensive but segmented fashion - meaning that we could have promoted a health savings plan. We could've pushed for tort reform, which added so much more cost to healthcare.
In campaigns, lots of things will be said, and what they have said about my husband is just simply not true.
Typically, after moving backwards, the economy takes even more steps forward.
It's not coincidental that America's vigorous recovery in the early 1980s was led by a president who worked hard to unshackle growth in the private sector.
Our private-sector work force is the most industrious, innovative, productive, and ambitious in the world.
Outside of Washington, D.C., most Americans aren't concerned with doing things 'big.' They're looking for less government spending, lower taxes, and good jobs.
We want to make sure that workers know their rights and that employers know their obligations. That is the best way to protect workers.
I know what it is like to feel vulnerable and fearful during a difficult time.
We're a robust democracy here. That's the wonderful thing about this country.
People can voice their different points of view. We are also a country where there will be criticism.
When there's change, people are always anxious.
I can tell you I love California - and no more.
Those memories of living in a developing nation are part of who I am today and give me a profound understanding of the challenges of economic development - an understanding which will make my tenure as Peace Corps director, I hope, a very special one.
My first port of call was Los Angeles. That's where I laid my first foot on America.
I am not seeking any position in a Dole Administration.
Every person - we want to make sure that every person who wants a job will indeed get one.
Even if it's a national issue, the federal government cannot provide all the answers.
The ingenuity and creativity of the private sector is essential to meeting American's needs for a skilled work force.
Progress is being made, but a lot of women are realizing it is not what they envisioned.
We need fair and free trade.
We are a Republic with different branches of government, and so the Senate and the House are going to be full partners in working with the White House.
For any trade deal to move forward, there has to be agreement.
I know that some people, when they are growing up and they - as a person of color in a majority community - that they may feel as if they are left out, or they feel a bit strange.
My parents were very supportive.
I will carry with me always the deep sense of what it feels like to be an outsider and how tough it was, how hard it was to adapt to this country.
My parents were very, very strict parents, and they were not used to this new, you know, American custom of letting your children sleep in someone else's house.
What out country is facing right now is a skills gap.
We have a lot of employers who are looking for skilled workers and not being able to find them. And we have workers who lack the requisite skills to access these good-paying jobs in high growth industries.
The majority of the new jobs being created require higher skills, more education.
I love working in the garden.
In normal times, laid-off workers are unemployed an average of eight weeks.
Washington policymakers have to understand the adverse implications of their actions on job creation, and they must reorder some of their priorities.
In the best of years, millions of jobs are lost.
401k savings accounts have become so important in the landscape of retirement planning that their security and expansion became a top priority in formulating and implementing the Pension Protection Act of 2006 that was enacted during my tenure as the U.S. Secretary of Labor.
While conventional wisdom has traditionally sided against borrowing from retirement savings, sentiment has shifted toward borrowing from one's own assets with the realization that other forms of credit come at a much higher cost and often are not even available to borrowers with limited means and urgent needs.
It has long been said the only things in life that are certain are death and taxes. Automatic enrollment for insurance of 401k loans would add an additional certainty. Fewer Americans would suffer the unnecessary loss of retirement savings due to unanticipated and untimely misfortune in an already stressful time of need.