Nomination Holds

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I want to explain my position on the nomination of Lael Brainard to be Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs. I voted against Dr. Brainard in the Finance Committee, and I want the record to show that I am opposed to her nomination in the full Senate.

Dr. Brainard was nominated on March 23 of this year, and the Finance Committee's routine vetting began shortly after that. For the past 9 months Dr. Brainard has given evasive, incomplete, and inconsistent answers to questions asked by the Committee minority and majority. I have said this before, but every nominee who passes through the Finance Committee has been treated the same for the nearly 9 years I have been either chairman or ranking member. Dr. Brainard was treated in a manner consistent with how past nominees have been treated, but she did not respond in a consistent manner. On November 18, the Finance Committee released a memo covering three basic issues that arose during the vetting of Dr. Brainard. The nominee had a chance to review and make comments on this memo before it was released.

The first issue covered in the memo involves responses to questions on the Finance Committee questionnaire pertaining to previous late payments of taxes and whether or not the nominee is current on taxes owed. The nominee had to submit four separate responses to one question as the committee came to gradually discover that Rappahannock County, VA, property taxes had been paid late in 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008. The issue is not that someone forgot to pay their property taxes on time; the issue here is the difficulty the Finance Committee had in getting complete, accurate, and correct answers out of Dr. Brainard. Committee staff spent most of 2009 attempting to get straight answers from Dr. Brainard, and the whole time this was going on the nominee had not paid her 2008 property taxes. The nominee finally disclosed the late payment of the 2008 property taxes on October 12, 2009, though the taxes had actually been paid in September. Answers on this specific issue from the nominee reflect a troubling aspect that is characteristic of many of Dr. Brainard's answers. Though Dr. Brainard owns the Rappahannock County property with her husband, she has consistently avoided taking any responsibility for the payment of taxes owed.

As I said before, the issue is not that someone forgot to pay county property taxes on time. Though a chronic inability to pay taxes timely is a serious concern, the real problem here is the inability of the nominee to be straight with myself, our staff, and the committee as a whole.

The second issue discussed in the November 18 memo involves the completion of several forms I-9, employment eligibility verification, which is required to document that a new employee is authorized to work in the United States. The nominee will tell you that all of her employees are eligible to work in the United States, and I do not dispute that. As before the issue here is the inability of the nominee to respond in a straightforward manner to questions. Additionally, the number of forms I-9 produced by the nominee with significant irregularities was very unusual. The committee released six different forms I-9 with irregularities. The committee memo discusses each of these, but possibly the most problematic is one form where it appears that dates have been written over to change the year. When questioned by committee staff about these forms I-9 in a meeting with the nominee and her accountant, the accountant asked to speak to the nominee alone, without committee staff in the room. The nominee sent a letter to myself and Chairman Baucus apologizing for the irregularities but offering no substantive explanation for many of them.

The third issue discussed in the Finance Committee memo involves the nominee's deduction of one-sixth of her household expenses from partnership income as an office-in-home deduction. Committee staff simply asked the nominee to show how she determined that one-sixth was the appropriate percentage, and the nominee has provided many different answers to this question. The Finance Committee memo summarizes Dr. Brainard's attempts to explain her office-in-home deduction with a variety of formulas adding up to a variety of answers. As before, the real issue here is not what percentage the nominee should have used to calculate her office-in-home deduction; the issue is the inability of the nominee to respond to what should be simple questions in a straightforward way.

As the committee memo notes, on her 2008 partnership return, the nominee reduced the size of her office-in-home deduction by half from one-sixth to one-twelth. Dr. Brainard said that this change was made because committee staff had been asking questions regarding her earlier use of the office-in-home deduction. The nominee did not amend her partnership returns for 2005, 2006, and 2007 where an office-in-home deduction of one-sixth was taken. I am not able to say that either number is correct or incorrect because the nominee provided several contradictory answers to this question.

As I have been saying, the larger issue here is not that someone was late in paying county property taxes, or the appropriate size of an office-in-home deduction. The larger issue is the apparent unwillingness or inability of a person, nominated by the President, to answer questions asked by a standing committee of the Senate in a straightforward manner. The reason Dr. Brainard's nomination took a full 9 months to the day to be discharged by the Finance Committee is that she spent 9 months giving evasive, incomplete, and inconsistent answers to committee staff in response to what are generally routine questions.

The only thing that is perhaps even more troubling than a nominee who doesn't seem to take the vetting done by a Senate Committee seriously is the reaction we have seen by others, including some who serve in this body. Some apparently see the due diligence and vetting done on nominees as an assembly line that produces a guaranteed outcome.

We have seen what I believe to be political operatives from outside the Senate selectively leak information in a effort to target the Finance Committee's process of vetting nominees and even the specific staffers who carry out this work. These political operatives have had a lot of work to do, as Dr. Brainard is the fifth nominee from the current administration to run into significant problems during the Finance Committee vetting process. The Finance Committee vetting process has not changed in the nearly 9 years I have been chairman or ranking member. What has changed are the specific nominees and the apparent willingness of some to tolerate and excuse issues that would have disqualified nominees from the previous administration.

Nominees in the previous administration would have had trouble garnering support if they had these sorts of problems, and I made it clear my job was not to defend a problematic nominee. Most people do not know about these problematic nominees from the past because in some cases they did not get a hearing and in others they were not nominated in the first place.

There is only one person who could tell us why the vetting process for this nominee took so long, and that person is Lael Brainard.

I have been trying to ask her questions for 9 months now without much success, so now my questions are for the critics of the Finance Committee process and those determined to see this nominee confirmed no matter what.

How long should we allow a nominee to provide incomplete and contradictory answers before we simply decide that person ought to be confirmed anyway?

Who is important enough not to be obligated to follow the same rules and obligations as all other nominees?

What high government official is so important that they ought to be exempt from the burden of routine Congressional oversight?

Is knowing the right people a substitute for simple honesty and strength of character?

As for myself, I am going to answers these questions by reiterating my opposition to the nomination.

I, Senator CHUCK GRASSLEY, do not object to proceeding to the nominations of Lael Brainard to be Under Secretary of the Treasury, Michael Mundaca to be an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, Mary Miller to be an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, and Charles Collyns to be an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury.

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