President-elect Donald Trump has selected Elaine Chao, a former U.S. labor secretary, to lead the government’s transportation policy and his plans to rebuild infrastructure in a program valued at as much as $1 trillion, according to a person familiar with transition planning.
Elaine Chao
Elaine Chao
Chao, 63, a former banker who served all eight years of President George W. Bush’s administration, would become secretary of the Transportation Department in Trump’s Cabinet if confirmed by the Senate. Trump’s economic advisers released a plan advocating the provision of as much as $140 billion in tax credits to support $1 trillion in infrastructure investment. The credits would be offset through tax revenue from the projects’ labor wages and business profits. The president-elect’s transition website says the new administration seeks “to invest $550 billion to ensure we can export our goods and move our people faster and safer.” The details on the structure of the plan are still to come. How Trump Might Try to Fix Bridges and Highways Trump pledged in his victory speech to “rebuild our highways, bridges, tunnels, airports, schools, hospitals,” an effort that “will put millions of our people to work.” Power plants, ports, water pipes, sewage treatment plans, electrical grids, even parks and schools, can also fit under the expansive definition of infrastructure. The Transportation Department has been the conduit for U.S. funding of highways, bridges and airports. It regulates airlines, automobiles, railroads, trucking and busing. The agency has a budget of about $95 billion and more than 57,000 employees among its various divisions, including the Federal Highway Administration, Federal Aviation Administration, Federal Railroad Administration and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Chao in June joined the Hudson Institute, a Washington-based policy group, as a distinguished fellow focusing on topics including employment, labor mobility and trade. She is married to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican. Labor Complaints Chao was named deputy secretary of transportation in 1989 by George H.W. Bush, making her the No. 2 leader in the agency, according to her website. As labor secretary from 2001 to 2009, she issued regulations requiring more disclosure of union spending on lobbying and politics and pushed rules that Democrats said created too many white-collar exemptions to overtime pay requirements. Republicans said the rules added overtime protection for 1.3 million workers. The Labor Department under Chao inadequately investigated complaints from low-wage and minimum-wage workers alleging that employers failed to pay the federal minimum wage and required overtime, according to a July 2008 report from the Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress. In one example, the department told a woman receiving room and board, but no pay, for working as a night attendant at an assisted living facility that she could file a private lawsuit, according to the report. In another report a year later, GAO said Labor Department procedures “left thousands of actual victims of wage theft who sought federal government assistance with nowhere to turn.” Chao didn’t speak English when she arrived with her family in the U.S. at age 8 from Taiwan, according to a biography on her website. She graduated from Harvard Business School and was vice president of syndications at BankAmerica Capital Markets Group and a banker with Citicorp in New York before entering public service that included leading the Peace Corps. Chao sits on the boards of News Corp., Wells Fargo & Co., Vulcan Materials Co. and Ingersoll-Rand Plc, according to data gathered by Bloomberg.