Biden Withdraws Raskin’s Fed Nomination After Manchin Shoots It Down

Sarah Bloom Raskin, nominee to be vice chairman for supervision and a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, speaks during the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee confirmation hearing in Washington, on Feb. 3, 2022. Bill Clark/Pool/AFP via Getty Images

President Joe Biden announced Tuesday that he would withdraw Sarah Bloom Raskin’s nomination to serve as Vice Chair for Supervision of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.

The announcement came one day after Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) declared he would not vote for Raskin, a move many observers saw as the death knell for her nomination in a closely divided Senate.

“After serving as the second-in-command at Treasury and with prior service on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, Sarah Bloom Raskin knows better than anyone how important the Federal Reserve is to fighting inflation and continuing a sustainable economic recovery,” Biden announced through a statement.

The wording appeared to take aim at Manchin’s Monday announcement, in which the West Virginia senator said, “the Federal Reserve Board must remain hyper focused on ending the inflation taxes hurting working families, and getting more workers off the sidelines and back into the economy.”

“Her previous public statements have failed to satisfactorily address my concerns about the critical importance of financing an all-of-the-above energy policy to meet our nation’s critical energy needs,” Manchin added.

Raskin is married to Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), who led the second impeachment trial of then-President Donald Trump in the House of Representatives.

During Barack Obama’s presidency, Raskin served as a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors before later serving as a deputy secretary of the U.S. Treasury. She is currently a professor at Duke University Law School, where her work is said to include “the adaptation of financial regulatory tools, as they pertain to climate risk.”

“Despite her readiness—and despite having been confirmed by the Senate with broad, bipartisan support twice in the past—Sarah was subject to baseless attacks from industry and conservative interest groups,” Biden’s statement continued.

“Unfortunately, Senate Republicans are more focused on amplifying these false claims and protecting special interests than taking important steps toward addressing inflation and lowering costs for the American people.”

Raskin’s nomination had been under consideration by the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. In February, Republicans on that committee stalled her nomination by not showing up for a vote on Raskin and four other nominees to the Fed.

Earlier that month, Republicans on the panel released a report that highlighted some of her past statements on climate change and finance.

In a 2020 Ceres report, for example, Raskin stated that climate change will “flatten an economy and grind it to dust.” In that same report, she said financial regulators should work to “allocate capital” away from fossil fuels.

Similarly, in a Project Syndicate article, Raskin referred to “access to credit” as one lever for financial regulators seeking to “support a rapid and just green transition.”

In prepared testimony to the Banking Committee in early February, Raskin said the Vice Chair of Supervision position for which she was nominated “does not involve directing banks to make loans only to specific sectors, or to avoid making loans to particular sectors.”

“I urge the Senate Banking Committee to move swiftly to confirm the four eminently qualified nominees for the Board of Governors—Jerome Powell, Lael Brainard, Philip Jefferson, and Lisa Cook—who are still waiting for an up-or-down vote,” Biden’s statement concluded.

Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), the ranking of the Senate Banking Committee, had told The Epoch Times on March 14 that Republicans on the committee “are willing to vote on the other four Fed nominees.”

He added that he hoped the committee’s chair, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), would schedule a hearing to consider those remaining nominations for this week.

The Epoch Times has reached out to Brown for comment.