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Floor Speech

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Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, this morning, the Banking Committee is examining three of President Biden's nominees to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.

The Fed is one of the most consequential institutions in America. Its decisions have massive ramifications for our citizens and for the world economy.

At the same time, since its independence is paramount, the Fed's structure insulates the Governors from short-term influence and political pressure. When an institution this important is this independent, the guardrails that confine its power are extremely important.

Now, Congress has given the Fed a statutory mandate that is really very clear and very limited. The Fed's dual mandate is maximizing employment and stabilizing prices. That is it. That is what the Fed exists to do.

The Fed is meant to serve as our central bank. It is not meant to act as an unelected superlegislature that dabbles in broader economic policymaking should it strike its fancy.

Its current leader, Chairman Powell, understands this keenly. But, unfortunately, President Biden's nominee for the powerful No. 2 slot wants to destroy this crucial distinction.

Less than 2 years ago, Sarah Bloom Raskin launched a PR campaign saying the unelected Fed Governors should pursue liberal environmental goals that elected Democrats cannot get through Congress through the banking system.

That bears repeating. President Biden's nominee for Fed Vice Chair wants unelected bureaucrats to financially bully the private sector into policy changes which lack enough support to become law the honest way.

So let's get more specific. Ms. Raskin has argued repeatedly in print that the Fed should ideologically pick winners and losers in the energy sector.

In 2020, she said unelected bureaucrats should have excluded companies that employ Americans and produce American energy from widely available rescue loans because oil and gas are not green enough for liberals' liking.

Now, this is the same old Democratic war on fossil fuels and middle America being smuggled into a dangerous new forum.

Washington Democrats want to raise Americans' gas prices. They want to make electricity even less affordable. They want it to cost more to keep your family warm in the dead of winter. And now they want to do all this in a radical new fashion where voters could never hold them accountable.

The stated justification for this power grab is that climate change may impact the future of our economy; so therefore, it is the Fed's business--what nonsense with no limiting principle. Every major policy could affect our economy. Opening this Pandora's box would transform the Fed from an apolitical central bank into a hyperpolitical superlegislature. It would turn the venerable institution that is supposed to safeguard the American dollar into enforcers for a radical agenda that can't make it through Congress.

So you had better believe liberal activists are already acknowledging this would not stop with climate issues. They have got a whole list of ideological goals they would like the Fed to literally force on our country.

A year and a half ago, Democrats introduced legislation that would assign the Fed the mission of racial redistribution. They want to hardwire a kind of financial affirmative action plan into our banking system.

Look, the American people don't want these wild ideas. So their elected Representatives actually don't support them. Now the far left wants to transplant these radical campaigns out of Congress and into our central bank, where American voters don't get a say. This is just another example of today's Democratic Party's refusing to work within the basic rules and institutions and, instead, trying to steamroll the guardrails to get their way.

Ms. Raskin's crusade would hurt working families, kill American jobs, make our Nation less independent, and cripple the Fed's independence in the process. She wouldn't even need her colleagues' votes to do this damage. The Vice Chair for Supervision has significant unilateral powers. She might be able to do this all by herself.

Here is the bottom line: Working families can't afford a nominee who is dying to jack up their bills and gas prices. Kentuckians and middle Americans can't afford a central banker who wants to bankrupt our industries and kill our jobs.

The global economy can't afford for the Fed to become a partisan battlefield, and the American people will not accept their central bank acting like some woke--woke--superlegislature where citizens get no say.

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