Top Republican senators have launched an eleventh-hour effort to block Sarah Bloom Raskin’s confirmation to the top regulatory role at the Federal Reserve by boycotting a planned vote on Tuesday.
The Senate banking committee had been set to vote on Raskin, a Democrat who previously served as deputy secretary of the US Treasury and was nominated by President Joe Biden alongside four others to fill senior roles at the central bank.
But Republicans, led by Pat Toomey, the top-ranking Republican on the committee, have raised concerns about Raskin’s previous statements that regulators should take a bigger role in policing climate risks.
Raskin is also under fire for previously serving as a board member at Reserve Trust when the fintech group successfully opened a “master account” with the Fed that gave it direct access to the central bank’s payments systems.
Republicans have claimed that Raskin, who was a Fed governor before joining the Treasury, has not been sufficiently transparent about whether she used her government connections to help the fintech trust company open the account. She has denied any wrongdoing,
“Important questions about Ms Raskin’s use of the ‘revolving door’ remain unanswered largely because of her repeated disingenuousness,” Toomey said.
Republicans held up the vote on Tuesday by refusing to provide the quorum necessary to advance the confirmation process. All 12 Democrats on the committee still convened to express their support for advancing the confirmation process.
Fed nominees are traditionally confirmed by the banking committee before a final vote in the Senate.
While Toomey’s efforts stalled that process, they did not necessarily spell the end of the road for Raskin, whose nomination could still be brought to the Senate floor by Chuck Schumer, the chamber’s top Democrat.
When asked about the stand-off, Schumer told reporters on Capitol Hill: “We hope that chairman [Sherrod] Brown and Senator Toomey can work this out.”
In a statement released on Tuesday, Brown, a Democratic Senator from Ohio and chair of the banking committee, criticised Toomey for choosing to “abdicate his duty to the American people and put our economic recovery at risk”.
Elizabeth Warren, the progressive Democratic Senator from Massachusetts, admonished Republicans for disregarding an “olive branch” extended by Biden when he renominated Jay Powell as Fed chair last year, and “lighting that branch on fire”.
Biden also elevated Lael Brainard, a Fed governor, to the central bank’s vice-chair position. Alongside Raskin, Biden also nominated Lisa Cook, a professor of economics and international relations at Michigan State University, and Philip Jefferson, a professor at Davidson College, to fill the remaining governor seats.
Toomey’s tactics threatened to hold up not just Raskin’s confirmation, but also those of Biden’s three other nominees and the confirmation of Powell for a second term.
“Every one of these five nominees to the Fed should move together and should get votes on the floor of the Senate,” said Warren.
Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, backed his colleagues on Tuesday, using a speech on the Senate floor to take issue with Biden’s nomination of Raskin and Cook.
“I urge President Biden to find a better, more mainstream, more bipartisan candidate to serve this crucial institution,” McConnell said of Raskin.
McConnell said Cook had “previously promoted partisan conspiracy theories” and pointed to a 2020 case in which she allegedly called for another academic to be fired over their opposition to defunding the police.
Bill Hagerty, the Republican senator from Tennessee who sits on the banking committee, also supported Toomey’s actions, saying Raskin’s “radical views to choke off capital to the oil-and-gas industry are damning enough, but her lack of transparency requires additional scrutiny . . . not a vote”.
He said he would vote in favour of Powell, Brainard and Jefferson but said Cook “has not demonstrated to me that she is experienced enough in economic and monetary policy for an appointment to the Fed”.
