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lisa cook
Senate GOP Shamed for Stalling Vote on Biden's Fed Nominees
"Ranking Member Toomey chose to abdicate his duty to the American people and put our economic recovery at risk, instead of doing his job," said a top Democrat.
Feb 15, 2022
Activists and Democratic senators were outraged Tuesday after some Senate Republicans skipped a key committee vote, delaying the confirmation of President Joe Biden's five Federal Reserve nominees to protest his pick for the top banking regulator.
"The Federal Reserve is at a critical juncture where it must have the expertise to tackle the compound crisis of Covid, inflation, and unemployment, and the realities of the climate crisis in our communities."
The boycott was led by Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), ranking member of U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, which was was set to vote on all five nominations. The panel's rules require that a majority of members are present for such actions, which can advance nominees to the full chamber for final confirmation vote.
"Shame on Sen. Toomey and Republicans of the Senate Banking Committee for boycotting today's vote and delaying the confirmation of this highly qualified slate of Federal Reserve board nominees," declared 350 U.S. campaign manager Brooke Harper.
"This boycott is pure politics, and a rejection of the serious skill, competence, and experience this slate would bring to the Federal Reserve," said Harper, whose group criticized Biden's renomination of Fed Chair Jerome Powell but welcomed the others.
"Combined, we believe that Lael Brainard as Federal Reserve vice-chair, along with Sarah Bloom Raskin, Lisa Cook, and Phillip Jefferson are a strong ensemble that can reinforce the critical independence of the Federal Reserve, while at the same time bringing long-overdue diversity of thought, experience, and perspective to the Board of Governors," the campaigner added.
GOP members of the panel opposed voting on Bloom Raskin--a former Fed board member and the wife of Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.)--as vice chair for bank supervision.
Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), who chairs the committee, said in a statement that "Ranking Member Toomey chose to abdicate his duty to the American people and put our economic recovery at risk, instead of doing his job and showing up to vote on Ms. Bloom Raskin, Dr. Cook, Dr. Jefferson, Gov. Brainard, and Chair Powell's nominations."
"Americans depend on us to get these nominees on the job as soon as possible. If my colleagues are as concerned about inflation as they claim to be, they will end the theatrics," Brown said. "Any actions to delay this vote will hurt workers, their families, and our recovery."
Speaking to panel members Tuesday, the chair also defended Bloom Raskin:
Let me be clear: Ms. Bloom Raskin has been the subject of an unrelenting smear campaign and fear mongering by the ranking member and Republicans--something that's become all too common.
They've distorted her words and painted her as some sort of radical. As we heard during her nomination hearing, in her own words, Ms. Bloom Raskin is a mainstream economic thinker. She is not in the business of telling banks whom to lend to. Her views on climate are not extreme. They are about accounting for risks that that threaten our financial system, wherever we find them. As she has said over and over again, this is about economic and financial system resilience.
But the attacks on Ms. Bloom Raskin haven't stopped there. They've become more personal. They can't attack her on substance, so they've engaged in malicious character assassination--in innuendo--without offering a shred of evidence.
"Now Republicans have fled the room--hiding rather than vote on a fair and experienced nominee," Brown added. "I urge my Republican colleagues to return to the table, to vote their conscience, and let the Senate fulfill its solemn duties."
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), a committee member, delivered a fiery speech about the boycott on the Senate floor Tuesday, denouncing the GOP for what she called "particularly desperate attacks" and "bad faith attempts to take down a highly qualified candidate who is committed to actually doing the job of regulating the biggest financial institutions."
"Raskin has unparalleled expertise in both the monetary policy and financial regulatory components of the job," Warren said. "Few people in the entire nation are as qualified for this role as she is."
The White House also slammed the walkout. Echoing Brown, Press Secretary Jen Psaki said that "some Senate Republicans are playing politics with the American economy by blocking a vote on the chairman of the Federal Reserve and an entire slate of well-qualified nominees."
"Such an extreme step would be totally irresponsible at a time when it's never been more important to have confirmed leadership at the Fed to help continue our recovery and maintain price stability," Psaki added.
The press secretary also stood up for the embattled nominee, calling Bloom Raskin "one of the most qualified individuals to ever be nominated to the Federal Reserve" and noting that she "has made the strongest ethics commitments in the history of the Fed."
As The New York Timesreported Tuesday:
Sarah Binder, a professor of political science at George Washington University who co-wrote a book on the politics of the Fed, said Democrats would need to come up with a strategy for overcoming the Republicans' block or the nominees could get stuck in limbo.
"It is really a delay--it might yet scupper Raskin," she said, noting that Democrats could break the nominations up or could try to garner enough support among the full Senate to override committee rules, though that might be a challenge. "It's pretty unchartered, and they're going to have to find a way."
Last year, 350 launched a campaign calling on the Fed to end bank fossil fuel financing, align its own spending and asset purchases with the Paris agreement's 1.5degC goal, and encourage investment to limit global temperature rise, with a focus on low-income regions and communities of color.
Harper emphasized Tuesday that "the Federal Reserve is at a critical juncture where it must have the expertise to tackle the compound crisis of Covid, inflation, and unemployment, and the realities of the climate crisis in our communities."
"These nominees can get the Federal Reserve back to work and address these serious crises through smart regulation," she said, urging Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) to move forward with a floor vote to "confirm these highly qualified economic champions now."
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Climate Advocates Call on Senate to Confirm Key Fed Nominees
The slate of nominees, said one campaigner, is "critical to the success of the Federal Reserve and the role it plays to protect peoples' interests."
Feb 03, 2022
Progressive groups are urging the U.S. Senate to confirm three of President Joe Biden's nominees for the Federal Reserve Board, arguing that the highly qualified candidates are needed to help address the needs of workers and the climate emergency.
"This slate of nominees can get the Federal Reserve back to work and address these serious crises through smart regulation."
The three nominees are Lisa Cook and Philip Jefferson for the remaining seats on the Fed's seven-member governing board and Sarah Bloom Raskin to be the board's vice chair for financial supervision, a key regulatory role. The trio appeared together Thursday before the Senate Banking Committee for a confirmation hearing.
Raskin is a former Fed board member and deputy Treasury Secretary. She's also the wife of Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland. Cook and Jefferson are both economists. If confirmed, Cook, who served on former President Barack Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, would be the first Black woman on the governing board, while Jefferson, who was previously an economist for the board of governors, would be the fourth Black man to serve on the board.
Brooke Harper, 350 U.S. campaign manager, said the nominees would "bring serious skill, competence, and experience to the Federal Reserve" and called the slate of nominees "critical to the success of the Federal Reserve and the role it plays to protect peoples' interests."
The Fed, Harper added, "is at a critical juncture where it must have the expertise to tackle the compound crisis of Covid, inflation, and unemployment, and the realities of the climate crisis in our communities. This slate of nominees can get the Federal Reserve back to work and address these serious crises through smart regulation."
The three nominees "having better qualifications than dozens of past nominees and eventual board governors," the Economic Policy Institute's Josh Bivens wrote last week, proved no buffer to resistance from the fossil fuel sector and Republicans. He said that "organized opposition... mostly settled into a focus on Cook and Raskin."
As Bivens wrote:
The opposition to Raskin concentrates on her policy record of regulating the powerful financial sector and seeking to make the Fed center climate change concerns in its policymaking. However, these aren't weaknesses or flaws in her candidacy, they are strengths. The opposition to Cook is even uglier, deriding her qualifications for the nomination using barely disguised racial code words. The wellspring of much of this opposition also included attacks aimed at Jefferson, but this gross campaign against the Biden slate has clearly decided it's more strategic to direct attacks about "qualifications" on Cook.
The attacks on Cook's qualifications also represent a profound bias in how Federal Reserve policymaking has been captured by the financial sector for too long. The narrow criticisms being leveled against Cook center on her not having published articles in academic journals about monetary macroeconomics. But, the vast majority of Federal Reserve policymakers have not published heavily in academic journals about these topics. Historically, the easiest pass given to governors who do not have an academic publishing record in monetary macroeconomics is the claim that they "understand financial markets," which usually means they worked for a financial institution.
Among those pushing back against Cook's and Raskin's nominations is the Senate Banking Committee's top Republican--Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania. During Thursday's hearing, Toomey attacked Raskin's previous comments on the Fed addressing climate risks.
"She's repeatedly, publicly, and forcefully advocated for using financial regulation--including the Fed--to allocate capital and de-bank energy companies," he said.
That line of attack from Toomey and other GOP lawmakers who've recieved significant campaign cash from the fossil fuel industry, accoording to Accountable.US, is simply a "parroting" of oil industry concerns that must be rejected by senators as they weigh the nominations.
"These attacks from Big Oil and their allies on Capitol Hill against Sarah Bloom Raskin are nothing more than industry's latest attempt to pretend climate change won't impact their business," said Jordan Schreiber, a spokesperson for the advocacy group.
"It's no coincidence," said Schreiber, "that nearly every Republican member of the Senate Banking Committee has taken over six figures in oil industry campaign cash. Bloom Raskin is an experienced regulator with mainstream views on climate and the future of the fossil fuel industry and she should be confirmed."
A day before the hearing, nearly 100 progressive groups including Public Citizen and the Open Markets Institute urged senators to confirm Raskin, Cook, and Jefferson.
In a Wednesday letter addressed to Senate Banking Committee Chairman Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), the groups wrote that Biden's "nominees are committed to maintaining stability in our economy in the midst of the pandemic, encouraging economic growth that benefits all working people, and fighting the impacts of inflation, all while preserving the independence of the Fed."
The groups pointed to "Cook's extensive knowledge of the nuances of Black employment [that] will provide much-needed input at the Fed in its efforts to achieve Chair [Jerome] Powell's priority of broad maximum employment"; Jefferson's research "on the effects of macroeconomic and monetary policy on employment, economic growth, poverty rates, and household finances--issues at the center of the Fed's mandate"; and called Raskin "well-suited to look out for emerging risks to financial stability and determine how to respond to them, in addition to being versed in new potential threats such as climate change and cybersecurity."
"We believe that these nominees' depth of scholarship combined with bipartisan experience and diverse coalition of supporters indicate that they would be powerful additions to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors," they said.
If Cook, Jefferson, and Raskin are approved by the banking panel, they will face confirmation by the full Senate.
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AOC, Tlaib Lead Call for Biden to Replace Trump Fed Chair With Climate Champion
"We need a leader at the helm that will take bold and decisive action to eliminate climate risk."
Aug 31, 2021
A group of progressive lawmakers led by Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib urged President Joe Biden on Tuesday to replace Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell--a Trump appointee--with a leader committed to tackling systemic climate risk and strictly regulating Wall Street banks.
"Under his leadership the Federal Reserve has taken very little action to mitigate the risk climate change poses to our financial system."
--Letter
In a joint statement, five progressive lawmakers argued that Biden should not take the advice of commentators and lawmakers urging him to reappoint Powell, a Republican who has won praise from some progressive economists for keeping interest rates low in the pursuit of full employment.
Reps. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), Mondaire Jones (D-N.Y.), Jesus "Chuy" Garcia (D-Ill.), Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), and Tlaib (D-Mich.) acknowledge that with Powell at the helm, the Fed "has made positive changes to its approach to full employment reflected in the new monetary policy framework."
But they contend that Powell's track record on climate and financial regulation should disqualify him from staying on as Fed chair past February 2022, when his term is set to expire.
"Under his leadership the Federal Reserve has taken very little action to mitigate the risk climate change poses to our financial system," the lawmakers said. "At a time when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is warning of the potential catastrophic and irreversible damage inflicted by a changing climate, we need a leader at the helm that will take bold and decisive action to eliminate climate risk."
According to a report released last week by Oil Change International, the Fed under Powell has "worked to maintain and increase fossil fuel finance from the United States" even as the central bank's leaders have made gestures toward the importance of reducing climate risk in recent speeches.
With Powell in charge, the Democratic lawmakers continued, the Fed "has substantially weakened many of the reforms enacted in the wake of the Great Recession regulating the largest banks, including capital and liquidity requirements, stress tests, the Volcker Rule, and living will requirements."
"Weakening financial regulations that were specifically created to prevent such a disaster from happening again risks the livelihoods of Americans across the country," they added.
The progressive lawmakers' statement echoes concerns that watchdog organizations and climate advocates have raised in recent months as Biden is poised to decide whether Powell will remain in his post for another term.
Last week, after Powell delivered a closely watched address in which he did not once mention the climate crisis, Public Citizen's Yevgeny Shrago warned that the Fed is "sleepwalking through climate chaos" and refusing to use the myriad tools at its disposal to mitigate risk.
"The European Central Bank (ECB) released a report that highlights both the immediacy and magnitude of the climate threat to the financial system and how far behind the Fed under Powell is in addressing it," Shrago wrote. "The Fed's lack of action in response to these threats should eliminate any question about whether Powell will take the climate crisis seriously. Biden must choose a new Fed chair who will."
While the progressive lawmakers did not mention any preferred candidates to replace Powell, the Revolving Door Project's Max Moran offered several suggestions in a blog post last month, including Michigan State University professor Lisa Cook and attorney Sarah Bloom Raskin, who previously served on the Fed's Board of Governors.
"Cook, who has been endorsed by Senator Sherrod Brown, is a strong supporter of full employment policies, and has testified against deregulatory proposals," Moran noted. "It's also wild that almost seven months into the new administration, Sarah Bloom Raskin still lacks a job. There might be no one better suited to lead the Fed's too-long-delayed work to purge the financial system of systemic risks caused by climate change."
"It's important for Biden to not settle for Powell merely because he's been strong on monetary policy in the last few years," Moran argued. "Biden can choose someone more deeply devoted to full employment, and who doesn't push him into a false choice between being strong on monetary policy and strong on regulatory policy. The president can have his cake and eat it too here, so he should. Because if he doesn't, it's average people who will suffer the most."
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