The GOP's Fed Fight

The Senate Banking Committee was scheduled to vote yesterday on five Biden nominees to the Federal Reserve Board. But Republicans are so concerned about the nominees that they boycotted the committee meeting, denying a quorum so they could not be voted out to the Senate floor for confirmation. 

Unless you work on Wall Street or run a bank, I doubt you spend much time thinking about the Federal Reserve. The "Fed" regulates U.S. banks and controls the money supply. It has a "dual mandate" to support the economy – achieve maximum employment and maintain stable prices. 

So, if the Federal Reserve raises interest rates, as it is planning to do, it will affect you if you have credit card debt or plan to finance a large purchase like a house or a car soon.  

But that's not what triggered yesterday's big dispute over Biden's nominees. 

Senate Republicans are particularly concerned about Sarah Bloom Raskin, the wife of Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, who led impeachment efforts against Donald Trump.

Mrs. Raskin has written extensively about her belief that the Federal Reserve should be fighting climate change. What in the world does climate change have to do with banks and a stable economy? Nothing really. 

The debate over climate change is a policy argument that should be decided by our elected representatives in Congress.  None of the members of the Fed are elected by the American people. 

But Mrs. Raskin wants to tell banks, "You're going to be audited for your impact on climate change. You're going to earn demerits for every loan you give to a company that contributes to climate change." 

In other words, it's just another leftist effort to defund and shutdown the American energy industry. That may sound insane to most Americans, but that's exactly what the left intends to do.

Remember Saule Omarova? Joe Biden nominated her to a key banking regulatory post. Thankfully, her nomination failed because she was also all in on bankrupting energy companies in the name of climate change.

This goes back to Barack Obama wanting to bankrupt coal companies, causing your electricity rates to "necessarily skyrocket." (His words, not mine.) It's the same left-wing insanity that made Europe dependent on Russian energy! But now we're doing it to ourselves.

It also demonstrates yet again the left's total commitment to politicizing and controlling everything. They destroyed the Boy Scouts. They've badly hurt professional sports. They're politicizing the military. 

Now they're putting up nominees for the Federal Reserve who want to bankrupt the American energy industry.