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When Bush chose her, Chao was making more than $200,000 a year as a "fellow" at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative, corporate-funded think tank in Washington. While she was there, Heritage scholar D. Mark Wilson issued a report titled How to Close Down the Department of Labor, in which he blasted Labor's "excessive burdens on businesses." Chao hired Wilson as deputy assistant secretary in charge of workplace standards.

She also made hundreds of thousand of dollars in speaking fees and by serving on the boards of directors for 13 corporations, several of which donated to McConnell and lobbied the Senate for favorable laws and federal contracts. Nearly all her board memberships began after they married in 1993.

Chao is staunchly conservative. Speaking at a Washington event in May, she said, "Often, people come into public service with a zeal to take immediate action. But, sometimes it's not what you do but what you refrain from doing that is important."

Few industries were happier to see Chao bring that philosophy to the Labor Department than mining, which has given more than $400,000 to McConnell's Senate campaigns, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

In early 2001, industry magazine Coal Age listed the various mining executives invited to shape the agency's agenda and wrote that they were "benefitting from high-level access to policymakers in the new administration."

At the Mine Safety and Health Administration, Chao named Utah coal operator David Lauriski as director, assisted by former McConnell aide Andrew Rajec. (Lauriski resigned in 2004, citing family concerns, after the Labor Department's inspector general questioned no-bid MSHA contracts that went to firms connected to him.)
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