[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 55 (Tuesday, March 29, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1814-S1816]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                     Nomination of Lisa DeNell Cook

  Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, I rise today to speak on the nomination of 
Professor Lisa Cook to serve as a Governor of the Federal Reserve 
Board.

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  At stake with Professor Cook's nomination is really how the Fed will 
respond to one of the most pressing challenges facing Pennsylvania and 
the Nation.
  Earlier this month, we learned that inflation hit a four-decade high 
of almost 8 percent. Prices are skyrocketing for just about everything: 
gasoline, food, rent. The amount of money Americans have to pay for 
basic goods and services that they need every week are going up, and 
they are going up much faster than their wages. That means working 
Americans are falling further and further behind.
  Under the guise of fighting this inflation, my colleagues across the 
aisle on the Senate Banking Committee have urged the swift confirmation 
of President Biden's slate of nominees to the Federal Reserve Board. 
The chairman of the committee said that President Biden's nominees are 
``ready to get to work fighting inflation.'' And yet we could have 
confirmed nominees many weeks ago.
  We still haven't voted on two of the nominees who have unanimous 
Republican support and near-unanimous Democratic support, which makes 
you wonder about our colleagues' commitment to this urgency. Maybe it 
is because our Democratic colleagues know that even if we don't confirm 
these nominees, the Fed has 9 out of 12 voting members on the FOMC in 
place. That is more than enough to raise rates if they decide they 
should raise rates to fight inflation.
  How do we know for sure that that is more than enough? Well, at their 
last meeting just 2 weeks ago, the Fed did, in fact, raise interest 
rates. So it was never the case that the Fed is somehow unable to fight 
inflation until the nominees are confirmed.
  What we really should be asking ourselves is, Are these nominees 
going to be the inflation fighters that we need that the White House 
claims they are? In my view, one of these nominees in particular, 
Professor Lisa Cook, dramatically fails this test.
  First of all, Professor Cook has nearly zero experience in monetary 
policy. Now, she does have a Ph.D. in economics, but not a single one 
of her publications concerns monetary economics.
  The White House cites as her main qualification on U.S. monetary 
policy her appointment as a Chicago Fed director. That appointment was 
made in January of this year, 2 weeks before President Biden announced 
Professor Cook's nomination to be a Fed Governor.
  And Professor Cook made very clear in her conversation with me that 
she had not participated in any policy or decisionmaking so far in her 
term at the Chicago Fed. In fact, she described her role as limited to 
``filling out paperwork''--that is her quote--for her new position, 
which is understandable. She had been there for 2 weeks before she was 
nominated to the Fed governorship. So that appointment to the regional 
Fed certainly doesn't count as a qualification to serve as a main Fed 
Governor.
  Professor Cook herself has acknowledged that her academic work on 
monetary issues is, let's say, sparse. When asked to list her top few 
works on monetary policy for the Banking Committee, she provided only 
one, and that was a book chapter about Nigerian bank reforms in 2005.
  What is even more troubling is that in addition to having no monetary 
policy experience, Professor Cook also appears to have no opinion at 
all on how the Fed should address inflation.
  Professor Cook repeatedly refused to endorse the Fed's decision to 
pull back its ultraeasy monetary policy and only did begrudgingly say 
that she agreed with the ``Fed's path right now as we are speaking''--
that is a quote--at her nomination hearing in February. Prior to that, 
she couldn't bring herself to acknowledge that maybe it was time for 
the Fed to change the policy that had contributed to the worst 
inflation that we have seen in 40 years.
  Professor Cook's answers to basic questions about what tools the Fed 
should use and how should the Fed consider using them in order to get 
inflation under control, her answer was nothing more than an 
incomprehensible word salad.
  Professor Cook has continued to insist that she would need to be 
confirmed to the Fed before she can have a view on inflation because, 
in her own words, ``We don't have access to all the data that the Fed 
has,'' and also, ``We don't have access to . . . the deliberations at 
the time they are being made.''
  These statements are bewildering coming from someone who has been 
nominated to address the most pressing inflationary threat in nearly 
two generations. To be clear, the Fed has no secret data, as Professor 
Cook seems to believe. In fact, monetary policy, including the recent 
41-percent increase in the money supply, is extremely transparent. And 
if Professor Cook is counting on Fed economists to guide her in making 
a prediction about inflation, then, first of all, they have been wrong 
on inflation consistently, very wrong; and, secondly, what is she going 
to do on the Fed and what is her role there if all she is going to do 
is take instruction from the Fed staff?

  Look, just about every economist in the country has an opinion about 
inflation right now because the data is all readily apparent and 
extremely disturbing. Every other nominee to the Federal Reserve has an 
opinion about inflation, and certainly, every Pennsylvanian I talk to 
has strongly held views about inflation.
  Professor Cook's claim made at her nomination hearing just last month 
that ``We have to be patient with the data''--and the data she was 
referring to was rising consumer prices--that certainly suggests, what 
is to me, an unacceptable toleration for the inflation that is ravaging 
American consumers.
  That brings me to my second point, and that is Professor Cook's 
history of extreme leftwing political advocacy and hostility to 
opposing viewpoints, the combination which I think makes her unfit to 
serve on the Fed. As I have said many times, it is extremely important 
that we keep politics out of the money supply. The Fed is supposed to 
be independent. The Fed is supposed to be apolitical so that it can 
focus on its job. But unfortunately, we have seen the encroachment of 
politics at the historically independent Federal Reserve, and we have 
seen that the Fed is not doing such a great job.
  There are people on the left, including in the Biden administration, 
who openly advocate that the Fed use its regulatory powers to address 
complex political issues, including things like what to do about global 
warming, social justice, even education policy. Look, these are all 
very, very important issues--very important issues--but they are 
completely unrelated to the Fed's limited statutory mandate and 
expertise.
  Professor Cook's record indicates that these are the topics that 
interest her the most, and she is likely to inject further political 
bias into the Fed's work at a time, exactly the time, when we need the 
Fed to be hyperfocused on getting inflation back under control.
  We discovered that Professor Cook sent out, in recent years, over 
30,000 public tweets and retweets--30,000. Included among them, she 
supports race-based reparations; she has promoted conspiracies about 
Georgia voting laws; she sought to cancel those who disagree with her 
views, such as she publicly called for a colleague of hers to be fired 
because he dared to tweet that he was opposed to defunding the police 
of Chicago.
  After Banking Committee Republican staff highlighted these tweets and 
brought them to public attention, Professor Cook blocked the Banking 
Committee Republican Twitter account 1 day before her nomination 
hearing.
  Apparently, Professor Cook not only realizes how inflammatory her own 
tweets are but also has pretty little regard for the Senate's 
constitutional responsibility to vet her public statements.
  See, the Fed is already suffering from a credibility problem because 
of its involvement in politics, its departure from its statutorily 
prescribed limited role, and, frankly, the not-very-good job it has 
done in keeping inflation under control.
  I am concerned that Professor Cook will further politicize an 
institution that must get back to being apolitical, so I urge my 
colleagues to vote against the motion to discharge Professor Cook.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority whip.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that prior to the

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vote at 11:45, I be permitted to speak for 15 minutes and Senator 
Sherrod Brown be permitted to speak for 2 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.