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Floor Speech
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Mr. MORENO. I rise to draw some sunlight and daylight with what is actually going on at the Fed. There is a lot of commentary that you hear in the news and social media, sometimes in a world here of hyperpartisanship, the facts get lost. So I just want to support and emphasize how important the legislation is that Senator Scott is proposing.
Back about 8 years ago, the Federal Reserve Board of Governors decided to renovate four buildings--four buildings that they have in Washington, DC.
They came up with what I think is a very, very high budget, $2.1 billion to renovate--not to build new--but $2.1 billion to renovate four buildings. Huge number; big, big number. Now back 7 or 8 years ago, the Federal Reserve was bringing in hundreds of billions of dollars in profits, as they have for decades. So you think, well, maybe this is a needed expenditure. I don't probably think that if we had some hindsight we wouldn't have embarked on that path, but they did.
One of the four buildings is on New York Avenue. They call it the NYA building. They decided to take that out of consideration. So now you have three buildings; the budget would have been somewhere around $1.6 billion.
They completed the Martin building about 3 or 4 years ago for about 25 percent over budget for the original estimate back in 2017, and here is where we are landing: The Eccles and 1951 building, the ones you see when you drive down Pennsylvania Avenue, the iconic picture of the Fed building, that total renovation should have cost about $1.6 billion. It is now together--all three buildings--it is now approaching $3.1 to $3.2 billion. The cost overrun is more than the entire cost to build CityCenter. Think about that for a second, on a renovation. The Chairman of the Federal Reserve--clearly one of two things is happening--either he is absolutely not paying attention to this project, or he is completely inept in managing it. Either way, what we need desperately is exactly what my colleague from Florida is suggesting--an independent body that would go in and say: What the heck is going on here?
Because I don't know about the Presiding Officer, but you go around Florida or I go around Ohio or when my colleague goes around Michigan, it is a little hard to explain why an organization like the Federal Reserve, which is losing hundreds of billions of dollars, is spending billions to renovate a building when their actions are costing them personally thousands and thousands of dollars on their car loans, their home loans, their credit card, their business loans.
There needs to be transparency. We need an independent Fed, we do; it is a proud history here in America. That is what has made our financial system strong.
But sometimes, even in the best institutions, you end up with incompetent leaders. And that is the case with Jerome Powell. And that is why we need an independent investigator to go in there and take a look at what is actually going on.
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Mr. MORENO. Will my colleague from Michigan yield to a couple of questions?
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Mr. MORENO. Got to go? OK. Well, here are the questions I was going to ask. He mentioned in his comments what is obvious, the President nominated somebody to be an inspector general. And then the Senate, 100 Members of the Senate confirm that person, thus ensuring the independence.
So if you don't like that particular nominee, you are able to come right here, go to the floor, and vote no.
But this idea that this inspector general would somehow be a partisan person by definition is wrong because what you are doing is you are giving the President the ability to make a nomination and then the Senate the unique constitutional power to confirm that nominee.
That is the way we have done it forever. We did it for President Trump. The prior Congresses did it for Biden and every other President before. So this idea that all of a sudden, this is now something new is totally nonsense.
And here, look, part of the problem that we have today is that the Democrats are making historical efforts to absolutely stop President Trump from basic operational duties.
We have never had a Congress--as you know, Madam President--that has not allowed nominees to go forward with unanimous consent. So here we are, on August 1, having to go through vote after vote.
I was going to ask my colleague if he knew whom he even voted no for, and the answer is they don't even know whom they are voting no for. They just come and vote no because that is what they do. And that type of just total blocking for the total partisanship is not what the American people want.
If you have a legitimate concern with the nominee, there is a process to do that. But just to universally filibuster every single nominee is not the way for us to move forward. The voters expect more.
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