January 28, 2022

Toomey Raises Alarm Over Serious Omissions in Fed Nominees’ Paperwork

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senate Banking Committee Ranking Member Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) today raised serious concerns after the Committee discovered numerous omissions in the Committee questionnaires of Sarah Bloom Raskin and Lisa Cook, two of President Biden’s nominees for the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. The nominees are scheduled to appear before the Committee for their nomination hearing next Thursday, February 3.


In order for the Committee to fully assess the fitness of individuals to serve in Senate-confirmed executive and independent agency positions, the Committee requires nominees to submit their published writings, speeches and presentations, and public statements.


“Ms. Raskin and Professor Cook aren’t being nominated for dog catcher. They’ve been selected for important and powerful positions at the Fed,” said Ranking Member Toomey. “That’s why it’s so concerning that a substantial volume of materials were not turned over to the Committee until we independently discovered dozens of omissions and requested the nominees update their questionnaires. All of these facts constitute shoddy compliance with the Senate confirmation process, which shows a lack of respect for Congress and raises concerns about the nominees’ willingness to comply with future congressional inquiries and oversight efforts.”


After these nominees submitted their Committee questionnaires last week, Committee staff identified numerous required materials that they had failed to disclose. For example, Ms. Raskin omitted from her questionnaire a public letter that she wrote in 2018 harshly attacking the bipartisan Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act (S. 2155), which she claimed “does little or nothing to strengthen community banks.” Ms. Raskin should be familiar with the requirements of the Senate nomination process since she has gone through it twice before. On the evening of January 26th, Ms. Raskin filed an 11-page addendum listing hundreds of pages of documents and hours of audio-video material that she had initially failed to disclose.


The Committee has also discovered more than 40 items that Prof. Cook failed to disclose. For example, Prof. Cook omitted from her questionnaire a webinar presentation that she gave in March 2021 for the University of California, Berkeley in which she expressed her support for a partisan Democrat pro-reparations bill—the Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act (H.R. 40). Last evening, less than one week before the hearing, Prof. Cook filed a five-page addendum listing hundreds of pages of documents and hours of audio-video material that she had initially failed to disclose.

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