Los Angeles Times congressional reporter Jennifer Haberkorn says that Senator Joe Manchin (D., W. Va.) will not support Sarah Bloom Raskin, President Biden’s nominee for the Federal Reserve’s vice chairman of supervision. “Her previous public statements have failed to satisfactorily address my concerns about the critical importance of financing an all-of-the-above energy policy,” Manchin said.
This comes a few days after Manchin said he supports a proposed deal from Senate Banking Committee ranking member Pat Toomey (R., Pa.) in which Republicans would allow four other Biden nominees to clear the committee in exchange for blocking Raskin.
Concerns over Raskin stem from her long record of advocating the usage of financial regulation to enact climate policy. In a January 2021 Financial Times article, she argued that “this is the time for the US to use its financial regulatory apparatus . . . to support and guide the market’s need for a reassessment of asset values.” The reassessment she had in mind involved allowing “US financial agencies to lend the strength of their diverse mandates in solving overlapping economic, health and climate crises.”
Climate policy is the proper task of elected legislators, not unelected central bankers. If progressives are unhappy with the state of American climate policy, they need to win elections and pass laws to address its perceived shortcomings, not appoint central bankers who will use financial regulation to get what they want. The Fed hasn’t done so great on its actual mandate from Congress, which includes low and stable inflation, and its mission creep into other areas should be opposed.
There are also ethical concerns over Raskin. As Tim Carney wrote for the Washington Examiner in February, Raskin “is a revolving-door lobbyist who used her access to get special treatment from the Fed for a company on whose board she sat. She thus made more than a million dollars for herself.” Additionally, her husband, Representative Jamie Raskin (D., Md.), failed to properly report her stock holdings, as required by congressional ethics rules.
Manchin is not on the Senate Banking Committee, but his opposition means Raskin is unlikely to win confirmation before the whole Senate. Of Biden’s Fed nominees, Raskin is by far the most important, and her defeat would be a major victory for Senate Republicans. Credit Toomey for leading the charge on opposing Raskin’s nomination, and credit Manchin for going against his party on a significant matter.