February 16, 2022

On Senate Floor, Brown Calls on Republicans to Get Back to Work and Vote on Fed Nominees

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, took to the Senate floor today to call out Republicans for walking out on the American people. Yesterday, Republicans of the Committee refused to attend a pre-scheduled vote on crucial Federal Reserve Board nominations, even as Americans struggle with surging prices and inflation.

“Americans every day get up, go to work, do their jobs. They expect us to get up every day, go to work, and do our jobs. But Republicans are AWOL in the fight against inflation. If we're going to get serious about inflation, we need a Federal Reserve in place. We need all seven Fed Governors in place, ready to work, ready to debate, and make decisions about monetary policy, about interest rates, about jobs, about attacking inflation,” said Senator Brown on the floor today.

Video of Senator Brown’s remarks is available here.

Sen. Brown’s remarks follow:

Mr. President, this is a pivotal moment for our country – for our economy. Everyone understands we need a full Federal Reserve Board. The first time - once we move the President's nominees and get them confirmed and get them sworn in, it'll be the first time in nearly a decade that the Federal Reserve has had a full complement of seven Fed Governors. That's especially important with the upcoming meeting of the Federal Reserve in March, because the Fed's job is to tackle inflation and bring prices down for American families.

It’s a pretty simple equation: the President nominates – I mean it didn't happen in the last few years, but the President nominates, we have hearings, we ask them questions, we send them follow up questions, the nominees answer these questions. That's how this place works. That's a good thing about this place. Then we call a vote in Committee and we vote yes or no. The job is vote yes, or vote no, and hope your side prevails. And that's what Americans think we should do. Every day, Americans get up, go to work, do their jobs.

But, Senate Republicans didn't do theirs yesterday.

We had our mark up, a meeting to confirm five nominees for the Federal Reserve: the Chair of the Federal Reserve, appointed originally by President Trump, has been re-nominated by President Biden. His nomination we were voting on, the Vice Chair Lael Brainard, who's been on the Fed some time, and then three new Fed slots that have been vacant for some time.

Sarah Bloom Raskin, who would be Vice Chair of Supervision, a very important job in the Fed, and the other two – also important jobs – Lisa Cook and Philip Jefferson. All five of these nominations, we wanted to vote on yesterday. Three weeks ago, Senator Toomey, the leading Republican on the Committee, he and I agreed it would be yesterday, the vote would be yesterday, and we would meet at 2:15 and vote them up or down. And everybody, all 14 of us, get a vote.

Well under Senate rules, if one party doesn't want to play ball, they don't show up and we can't do business. So all 12 Democrats showed up. We wanted to vote. We actually took an informal vote – passed 12 to nothing for essentially all six of them – there was one no on one of them. But Republicans didn't show up.

So as I said, Americans every day get up, go to work, do their jobs. They expect us to get up every day, go to work, and do our jobs. But Republicans are AWOL in the fight against inflation. If we're going to get serious about inflation, we need a Federal Reserve in place. We need all seven Fed Governors in place, ready to work, ready to debate, and make decisions about monetary policy, about interest rates, about jobs, about attacking inflation.

Americans don't want, Mr. President – in Boulder or Denver or Cleveland or Columbus – Americans don't want more political theatrics. They want solutions to bring down their costs. And Republicans, they've been great at coming to the floor and speaking against inflation. They've got their political stunts. But when it really came time to show up and do their job, they just simply didn't show up yesterday to do their jobs. All 12 Democrats were there ready to go. All 12 of us wanted to move forward on these five nominations for the Federal Reserve. And under Senate rules, we simply couldn't act officially to get this done.

So I know that the Ranking Member, I understand he doesn't want to do this for whatever reasons. He doesn't like her position on climate change. He doesn't like it that, the one he's complaining most about, he doesn't like it that she's going to stand up to Wall Street and not roll over for Wall Street every time Wall Street rattles the Fed’s change. He knows that, and he doesn't like that. But he's hanging his hat on some issue that really makes very little sense. Sarah Bloom Raskin, the person whom he's most complaining about, she answered – over a weekend, had 48 hours to answer more than 180 questions from Senator Toomey and his colleagues. She answered them all in 48 hours. Then, even outside of the Senate rules, more questions were sent to her, she answered those questions.

So it's really about the fact that far too many people here pay far too much attention to the oil company lobby. But that's really neither here nor there. Everyday Americans, they get up, go to work, do their jobs. Senate Republicans must do theirs. Pure and simple, Republicans are AWOL in the fight against inflation.

We're not going to stop fighting for these nominees. The American people want us to vote. Some people say vote yes, some no, I'm fine with that. But American people want us to do our jobs. 

When you come here, you don't – there aren't three boxes, vote yes, vote no, or check a box that says, I don't want to come to work today, I'm not going to vote. No, they want us to vote. So we'll keep fighting for these nominees. 

I implore at least one Republican of the 12 on the Committee to come to our next markup, our next vote, our next executive session so we can vote on these nominees. I want the Federal Reserve for the first time in a decade to all be there, pulling in the same direction, fighting inflation for our country.

 

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