‘Pro-Inflation’ Party Saboteurs Are Blockading President Biden’s Nominees To The Fed

Sedition Party members of Congress daily take to the floor of Congress to rail about inflation before the C-Span cameras. Republicans believe inflation is a winning issue for them – just don’t ask them what their plans are for dealing with inflation resulting from supply chain disruptions caused by a global pandemic. They don’t have any plans. They just want to recklessly fuel inflation psychology to sabotage the Biden presidency, and drag down the American economy with it. Chaos and sabotage are the hallmarks of the modern Republican Party.

The “Grim Reaper of Democacy,” Senate Miority Leader Mitch McConnell, admiited as much late last year. McConnell: No legislative agenda for 2022 midterms:

Mitch McConnell has told colleagues and donors Senate Republicans won’t release a legislative agenda before next year’s midterms, according to people who’ve attended private meetings with the minority leader.

On the night of Nov. 16, McConnell met with donors, lobbyists and a group of Republican senators in a private function room upstairs at the Capitol Hill Club. The 2022 agenda was on the menu.

In attendance was Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which convened the dinner.

A donor asked a question that could only be answered by McConnell. According to a source in the room, the donor said something to the effect of: We all know what’s wrong with the Democrats, but what are we going to be running on to help us win?

McConnell’s response was something to the effect of, With all respect, that’s not what we’re doing, the source said. McConnell has long held the view that putting out an agenda ahead of midterm elections is a mistake — at least for Senate Republicans, the sources told Axios.

This is not the first time that Mitch McConnell has had a “Do Nothing” agenda to offer voters in a midterm election, and unfortunately, Americans rewarded him in a base election in which Democrats failed to turn out to vote in a midterm election.

McConnell believes his view has been vindicated by recent history. He points, in particular, to when he led Republicans to win back the Senate in the 2014 midterms without proposing an agenda.

McConnell told the donor it would be the job of the next Republican nominee for president in 2024 to lay out the party’s future agenda.

McConnell made clear, the source said, the entire focus of the 2022 campaign should be about the things the Democrats are doing wrong. He cited the history of midterm losses for the party in power.

A top GOP operative, who didn’t attend the dinner but has often heard such conversations involving McConnell, said these kinds of discussions happen regularly with the Republican leader.

“It happens all the time,” the source told Axios. “Donors especially are always asking for an agenda of some kind and McConnell pushes back hard. Because he knows that all it does is take the focus off unpopular Dem policies and gives Dems something tangible to tear apart.”

“One of the biggest mistakes challengers often make is thinking campaigns are about them and their ideas,” the source continued. “No one gives a sh-t about that. Elections are referendums on incumbents.”

“Challengers need to keep the focus on what incumbents promised and point out how they failed to deliver and how that has negatively impacted voters’ lives,” the source said.

Democrats need to respond to this deeply cynical view of the world by focusing on how Republicans have engaged in chaos and sabotage to undermine the Democrats’ legislative agenda. Mitch McConnell’s “rein of terror” as Senate Republican Leader has been marked by his cynical policy of “total obstruction.” Republicans do not have the best interest of Americans at heart. Their only objective is to control power by any means necessary, including a violent seditious insurrection on Januaty 6, 2021.

The latest “total obstruction” tactic from the “Grim Reaper of Democacy” is what is known as a “legislative blockade” – preventing a quorum by Republican members of a committee boycotting a scheduled committee hearing. At least one member of the minorty party must be present to constitute a quorum.

This week Republicans engaged in a legislative blockade of the Senate Banking Committee to prevent a quorum and a vote on the nomination of Sarah Bloom Raskin, President Biden’s nominee for vice chair for supervision at the Fed.

Just to be clear, the Fed is the government agency assigned the responsibility of dealing with inflation through monetary policy. So while these cynical Republicans like to rant and rave about inflation, they are sabotaging President Biden’s ability to address inflation by blocking his nominees to the Fed.

Republican saboteurs are the “Pro-Inflation” Party for the cynical purpose of undermining the Bden administration in the naked pursuit of political power.

The Washington Post reports, GOP Fed blockade has Democrats worried about other nominations, including Supreme Court:

Senate Democrats are bracing for a potentially lengthy showdown over President Biden’s Federal Reserve nominees after Republicans boycotted a key committee vote Tuesday — and they are preparing for the possibility that the GOP might use the same bare-knuckle tactics against other high-profile nominees, including Biden’s forthcoming Supreme Court pick.

Republican members of the Senate Banking Committee, led by [retiring] Sen. Patrick J. Toomey (Pa.), did not attend Tuesday’s planned meeting in protest of Democrats’ intention to advance Sarah Bloom Raskin, Biden’s nominee for vice chair for supervision at the Fed, citing concerns about her work for a financial technology start-up, denying Democrats a majority quorum.

Raskin was among six Biden nominees who were set to be advanced to a floor vote who are now sitting in limbo because of the boycott. Banking Committee Chairman Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) made clear Wednesday that Democrats have no plans to separate Raskin’s confirmation from the others, which include a new four-year term for Fed Chair Jerome H. Powell.

MSNBC’s Chris Hayes showed what happened at the Senate Bnking Committee hearing. Sen. Jon Tester (normally Mr. Congeneality) condemned the Republican saboteurs.

“If [Saboteur] Toomey gets his way on this, it’s the way they will stop nominee after nominee after nominee: ‘Sorry, they didn’t answer right, so we’re not going to show up and provide a quorum,’ ” Brown told reporters Wednesday. “You can’t govern that way.” [Exactly! This is the whole point of Republicans engaging in chaos an sabotage.]

The GOP boycott comes as Biden prepares to make the single most consequential and high-profile nomination of his presidency so far: a successor for Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer, who announced last month that he would retire once his replacement is confirmed.

Asked if he was concerned that the GOP boycott tactic could expand to that nomination, Brown said, “I think this could set a precedent that could lead to that.”

Brown and other Democrats said this week that it was unclear what they could do to get around the boycott tactic given the evenly divided Senate and the set of rules that govern committee procedures.

The Senate has operated for more than a year with a 50-50 split between the parties. Democrats hold majority control with Vice President Harris’s tiebreaking vote, plus a delicately negotiated power-sharing agreement that gives Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Democratic committee chairmen agenda-setting power and guarantees the ability of a united Democratic caucus to advance legislation to the floor and confirm nominees.

But nothing in the agreement bars Republicans from employing the committee boycott tactic, which takes advantage of a Senate rule that requires committees to have a physical majority present to conduct business. With committees split evenly under the power-sharing deal, at least one Republican member must attend meetings to advance legislation or nominees.

The tactic was used only occasionally in 2021. Republicans on the typically sleepy Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee launched a boycott of Dilawar Syed, Biden’s nominee to be deputy administrator of the Small Business Administration, citing concerns about coronavirus pandemic emergency funds going to Planned Parenthood affiliates. Democrats cast the blockade as anti-Muslim bigotry, but they were not able to persuade any of the panel’s 10 GOP members to attend a meeting last year to advance his nomination.

Syed on Tuesday was named to a non-Senate-confirmed post at the State Department. While the White House has not withdrawn the SBA nomination, it is a tacit acknowledgment that Senate Democrats have no viable options to confirm Syed.

Sen. Rob Portman (Ohio), the top Republican on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said Wednesday that he has threatened committee boycotts of two Federal Labor Relations Authority nominees. Panel Chairman Gary Peters (D-Mich.) agreed at a Feb. 2 meeting to delay their consideration.

Remember, Rob Portman is who the media pundits always portray as the old school “country club” moderate Republican of the past that they yearn for, and the model of “bipartisanship.” Riiight. Here he is leading legislative blockades to sabotage President Biden’s nominees and sow chaos. Spare me your bullshit about so-called moderate Republicans.

Meanwhile, many Republicans have used more routine tools to delay Biden nominees, withholding unanimous consent and forcing Democrats to use time-consuming procedural workarounds — much as Democrats did to many GOP nominees during Donald Trump’s presidency. On Wednesday, for instance, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) blocked confirmation of several U.S. Attorney and U.S. Marshal nominees, which are typically confirmed by unanimous consent.

But any move to block a Supreme Court nomination would be a steep escalation. Senior Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee, including Sens. Charles E. Grassley (Iowa) and Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.), have sought to play down the prospects of a nasty partisan showdown over Biden’s nominee. But other Republicans are suggesting that tough tactics could be warranted if they view the high court pick as far out of the legal mainstream.

“I think it all depends on the nominee,” said Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.). “If [Biden] puts forth a highly controversial nominee with a lot of background information that needs to be examined … all those things could, you know, prompt us to use all the devices we have to go at whatever speed we think’s appropriate.”

Committee boycotts are not unheard of in the Senate: Democrats used them multiple times under Trump, attempting to slow the high-profile nominations for treasury secretary, Health and Human Services secretary and Supreme Court justice. Republicans had a clear majority at the time, and those boycotts took advantage of committee rules requiring minority participation in business meetings, which can be overridden by the majority on the Senate floor.

Because the current GOP boycotts are rooted in the Senate’s standing rules, they cannot be as easily waived without Republican help.

The Fed impasse comes at a highly consequential time for the central bank and for Biden’s economic agenda. The Fed is under pressure to control inflation, which has soared to the highest level in 40 years and emerged as a top threat to the economic recovery. Powell has signaled that the Fed plans to raise interest rates in March for the first time since the pandemic, and economists hoped that the board vacancies would be filled by the time it launched such a crucial policy pivot.

Meanwhile, inflation has become a key litmus test for how Americans judge the economy, dealing a political blow to the Biden administration. The White House touts its own moves to lower prices, including targeting corporate consolidation to help create more competitive markets. But controlling inflation is ultimately the Fed’s job, and much of Biden’s influence rests in his nominees.

Republicans have long slammed the Fed for not doing enough to combat inflation. But their latest tactic around Raskin’s confirmation suggests they’d rather keep the Fed from operating at full capacity than simply vote against Biden’s picks — at least for now.

“What you’re seeing is the further politicization of the Federal Reserve ahead of a very contentious selection process,” said Joe Brusuelas, chief economist at RSM. “These votes will happen. They just want to delay, not derail. That’s essentially the end game here.”

In addition to Powell, Biden tapped Fed governor Lael Brainard to be the Fed’s vice chair, and economists Lisa Cook and Philip Jefferson to open governor seats. Raskin has been nominated to be the Fed’s top banking regulator.

Republicans opposed Raskin as soon as Biden nominated her last month, arguing her focus on climate-related financial risks would amount to a vast overreach of the Fed’s regulatory authority. But the GOP campaign against Raskin intensified this week with the boycott and a sharper focus on her work as a board member of Reserve Trust, a Colorado-based payments firm, from 2017 to 2019.

Raskin joined the Reserve Trust board after her time as a Fed governor, where she served from 2010 to 2014, and as deputy secretary to former president Barack Obama’s Treasury Department, where she served from 2014 to 2017.

In 2017, the Kansas City Fed denied the Colorado firm access to what is known as a Fed master account, which gives banks direct access to the Fed’s payment systems. But Reserve Trust was then granted access a year later. During Raskin’s confirmation hearing, Sen. Cynthia M. Lummis (R-Wyo.) asked Raskin whether she used personal contacts from her regulatory background to help Reserve Trust secure its account.

Raskin repeatedly denied any impropriety, and, last week, the Kansas City Fed issued a letter outlining its decision to grant Reserve Trust an account. But Republicans say Raskin has not fully and directly answered questions about her interactions with Fed officials on behalf of Reserve Trust. The fact pattern, they say, suggests Raskin engaged in the type of “revolving door” behavior that Democrats have routinely criticized in the past.

“When, 36 times, your answer is, ‘I don’t recall,’ it’s not much of an answer. We need adequate explanation of what happened and answers to the questions — legitimate answers to the questions we’ve posed,” Toomey said Wednesday.

He didn’t have any problem when this guy said he “could not recall” sexually assaulting a woman in college.

The Kansas City Fed said that before 2018, Reserve Trust did not meet the requirements to be granted access to an account. But after the firm changed its business model, among other changes to state banking law, the Kansas City Fed approved the request.

But that defense has complicated Raskin’s confirmation even further. This week, the Colorado Division of Banking said its role was “misrepresented” by the Kansas City Fed, and that it always applies consistent analysis of state law. The pushback did not appear to implicate Raskin in any direct wrongdoing, but it nevertheless heightened Republican scrutiny.

“It only adds to the uncertainty and the questions and adds, frankly, to the ethical cloud that she’s under,” Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) said.

But Democrats have so far held firm on keeping Biden’s slate intact. They worry that separating the Raskin vote would allow Republicans to indefinitely freeze her confirmation.

On Wednesday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Biden had spoken with Brown and that the administration was “not advocating for splitting the nominees,” a message that was reinforced by Democrats on the Banking Committee.

“I think that would be a recipe for them holding Sarah Bloom Raskin hostage forever,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said.