[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 78 (Tuesday, May 10, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2404-S2406]
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.
  Two weeks ago, Senate Democrats tried to cancel the vote that was 
scheduled on Professor Cook's nomination.
  In his floor remarks, the chairman of the Banking Committee stated 
that Senate Republicans have been ``AWOL in the fight against inflation 
for months.'' The irony of that, of course, is that it was Democrats 
who wanted to cancel the vote. Republicans were ready to vote and not 
just on Professor Cook, mind you. We wanted to vote on the other Fed 
nominees as well. I objected to canceling the vote because we were 
ready to vote, and we wanted to vote, so the vote took place.
  Professor Cook's nomination failed that day on a procedural vote by a 
margin 47 to 51. Then, immediately after that, I asked consent to vote 
on the two remaining Fed nominees who have been processed in the 
committee but haven't been voted on. Those would be Chairman Jerome 
Powell, who has been nominated to be Chairman again, and Professor 
Philip Jefferson, who both could have been confirmed to the Fed that 
day, as they could have been confirmed months ago.
  But the Democrats objected to us having a vote a couple of weeks ago. 
It is really pretty amazing. Let me just be clear for the record. The 
Democrats hold the majority. The Democrats control the schedule on the 
Senate floor. And our Democratic colleagues have tied up for months the 
nominations of multiple nominees, including two--two--Fed nominees who 
have either unanimous or very nearly unanimous support. That is Jerome 
Powell and Philip Jefferson.
  So if confirming Fed nominees is so important to our Democratic 
colleagues in the fight against inflation, it makes you wonder about 
this strategy of canceling votes and not holding votes when Republicans 
have been trying to confirm the nominees.
  But I have a theory as to why this is, and I think it is because our 
Democratic colleagues know that Professor Cook is simply unqualified to 
serve as a Governor of the Federal Reserve Board. They don't want to 
leave her stranded as the final Fed nominee after all the other 
nominees get confirmed, so they are holding the nominations of Chairman 
Powell and Professor Jefferson hostage in order to push through their 
preferred candidate, their top priority.
  I want to address this specific point that the chairman has made in 
the past because he has made this several times. He has suggested that 
somehow Republicans oppose Professor Cook's nomination because she is a 
Black woman. Let me just be as clear as I can. That is a very offensive 
charge to make. It is actually outrageous. It is also blatantly and 
demonstrably false.
  In this Congress alone--a little over 1 year--Banking Republicans 
have unanimously supported eight Black nominees, six of whom were 
women: Cecilia Rouse, the first Black woman to serve as Chair of the 
CEA; Nuria Fernandez; Alexia Latortue; Adrianne Todman; Alanna McCargo; 
Ventris Gibson, the first Black woman to serve as Director of the U.S. 
Mint. Republican Banking Committee members voted unanimously in favor 
of confirming each of those six Black women, but we still hear this 
absurd and outrageous charge.
  Philip Jefferson--if our Democratic colleagues ever allow us to have 
a vote on him--will be the fourth Black man to serve as a Fed Governor. 
He was voted out of the committee 24 to 0.
  Let me just be very clear. Banking Committee Republicans didn't 
support these nominees because of the color of their skin; that is not 
the criteria by which we evaluate candidates. We supported them because 
each of them was qualified for the roles to which they were nominated. 
Frankly, that ought to be the criteria for evaluating any nominee, if 
you ask me, including Professor Cook.

  So let me address some of the arguments you are likely to hear 
regarding Professor Cook's qualifications.

[[Page S2405]]

  First of all, my Democratic colleagues like to point to Professor 
Cook's extensive educational attainments as evidence of her 
qualifications. She was a Marshall Scholar and a Truman Scholar, she 
was. She attended Spelman College, Oxford, and obtained a Ph.D. in 
economics from UC Berkeley.
  There is no question, these are impressive credentials, but they do 
not, by themselves, qualify her--or anyone else for that matter--to 
serve as the governor of the Fed, especially at a time when we need a 
Fed that is able and willing to tackle 40-year-high inflation that is 
devastating American families every single day.
  Now, our Democratic colleagues have claimed that Professor Cook is 
``a leading economist'' with years of experience in ``monetary policy, 
banking, and financial crises.'' But those claims are simply untrue.
  First of all, 75 percent of Professor Cook's assignment at Michigan 
State, including her tenure, is in the international relations 
department; it is not even in economics. Second, her experience in 
monetary policy is literally nonexistent. Not a single one of her 
publications concerns monetary economics.
  When asked to highlight for the banking committee her top works on 
monetary policy, she provided one, a book chapter on Nigerian bank 
reforms published 11 years ago. According to the White House, her main 
qualification on monetary policy is her service as a member of the 
Chicago Fed's Board of Directors.
  She joined the Chicago Fed's Board 2 weeks before President Biden 
nominated her to serve as a Fed governor.
  Third, her experience handling financial crisis has basically been 
limited to writing a cursory overview of the Eurozone crisis during a 
brief stint working in the Obama White House and working in Africa over 
20 years ago.
  Now, you don't need to be a trained economist to serve on the Fed 
Board, necessarily; but if you are going to serve on the Fed Board, you 
do need to have some views on monetary policy. You would think that 
would be especially the case for someone who is an economist. Given 
Professor Cook's glaring lack of experience in monetary policy, it 
perhaps is not surprising that Professor Cook has been unable to 
articulate any opinion at all on how the Fed should tackle inflation.
  Throughout the nomination process, she repeatedly refused to endorse 
the Fed decision to pull back its ultra-easy money policy. She also 
refused to suggest any alternative policy. And only on the actual day, 
while at her hearing, did she finally begrudgingly say that she agreed 
with the ``Fed's path right now as we are speaking.''
  Professor Cook's answers to very basic questions about what the Fed 
should do to tame inflation--to paraphrase the late Justice Scalia--
amount to nothing more than logical applesauce. Professor Cook has 
continued to insist she would need to be confirmed to the Fed Board 
before she can have a view on inflation, because in her words: ``We 
don't have access to all the data that the Fed has.'' And she also 
said: ``We don't have access to the deliberations at the time they are 
being made.''
  Now, these things are just bewildering for someone who has been 
nominated to address the most pressing inflationary threat in nearly 
two generations. And let's 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. Anyone who wants to know has 
all the data available to him or herself.
  Just about every economist in the country right now has an opinion 
about inflation. Every other nominee to the Federal Reserve has an 
opinion about inflation, including what to do about it.
  And since we know very little about her views on inflation, my grave 
concern is that Professor Cook will serve as an inflation dove on the 
Fed at a time when American families continue to be ravaged by these 
price increases.
  But you don't have to take it from me, Bloomberg Economics expressed 
concern with Professor Cook's wishy-washy answers also, and they wrote:

       Asked if she would endorse the current rates trajectory, 
     she did not provide a straight answer but said she would look 
     at data once the decision point arrives.

  Another quote from their analysis:

       When asked how she would get inflation under control, she 
     answered: By eliminating the risk of financial crisis.

  The American people deserve better than this. They deserve a serious 
nominee who understands monetary economics, has a firm grasp on how to 
combat inflation and restore stable prices, and will serve without a 
political agenda.

  So if Lisa Cook doesn't have any expertise in monetary policy, then 
why would Democrats want her on the Fed Board? Well, that brings me to 
my second point: Professor Cook's history of extreme leftwing political 
advocacy and hostility to opposing viewpoints, which I think make her 
unfit to serve on the Fed.
  It is exceptionally important to keep politics out of monetary 
policy, but unfortunately, we have seen the encroachment of politics at 
the historically independent Federal Reserve.
  There are people on the left, including in the Biden administration, 
who openly advocate that the Fed use its supervisory powers to resolve 
complex political issues, like what to do about global warming and 
social justice, even education policy.
  These are all very important issues, but they are wholly unrelated to 
the Fed's limited statutory mandates and expertise. Professor Cook's 
record indicates that she is likely to inject further political bias 
into the Fed Board at a time when we need the Fed to be focused on 
fighting inflation.
  In her statements or tweets, retweets, Professor Cook has supported 
race-based reparations, promoted conspiracies about Georgia voter laws, 
and sought to cancel those who disagree with her, with her views. She 
specifically and publicly called for the firing of an economist and 
colleague who dared to tweet that he was opposed to the idea of 
defunding the Chicago police.
  The fact is the Fed is already suffering from a credibility problem 
because of its involvement in politics and its departure from its 
statutorily proscribed role and its failure to keep inflation under 
control. I am concerned that Professor Cook will further politicize an 
institution that really needs to get back to being apolitical.
  I urge my colleagues to vote against the nomination of Lisa Cook.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Peters). The Senator from Ohio.
  Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I have kind of heard it all today. I am not 
going to engage with the ranking member when he calls her unqualified. 
We know this is about a history of this committee's Republicans voting 
against very qualified African-American women. We have won that debate; 
we have won it with the American people.
  And I was just handed--because I remembered this. I remembered 
hundreds, literally hundreds, of prominent people in the economics 
field and outside the economics field that supported Lisa Cook, they 
wrote letters. We got more letters, I believe, for Lisa Cook than any 
nominee for the Fed.
  The ranking member knows, and he has voted for some pretty 
unqualified people, and that he would decide this is one he is voting 
against is just kind of sad. Let me give you some examples, 35 Marshall 
and Truman Scholars are supporting her--35; the National Bankers 
Association; Ben Bernanke, a Bush nominee who was chair of the Federal 
Reserve; all kinds of organizations, some political, some not 
political, many of them bank-based.
  I will send these to the ranking member so he can get a look at them. 
I know he has already seen them before, but they seem to have slipped 
his mind.
  I urge my colleagues to support Dr. Cook. She teaches at Michigan 
State, the presiding officer's proud institution. She would be a 
historic confirmation to the Board of Governors, we know that. She 
understands how economic policy affects all kinds of different people 
in different parts of the country, from the rural south where she grew 
up to the industrial Midwest where she built her career. One of the 
things I like about her, the Federal Reserve--I mean, I understand that 
economic conservatives in this body--and I think the ranking member 
would probably define himself that way; I admire his courage in voting 
against--

[[Page S2406]]

voting for the removal of President Trump, so I admired his courage. I 
just think he is wrong on these kind of nominees. But I just--I look at 
her, and I see how--what I like--one of the things I like about her is 
the Fed, for years, has just practiced this top-down economic policy. 
The people that sit on the Fed, they almost all look like me, 
historically.
  In fact, Lisa Cook will be the first Black woman in 109 years ever to 
sit on the Fed, seven members of the Fed at any one time, and the terms 
are--usually they stay 5 to 10 years--so you can see how many people 
cycle in and out. But they almost all believe in this trickle-down 
economics that you give tax cuts to rich people and it will trickle 
down and the economy will be better.
  Well, Lisa Cook is different. She doesn't come from the coast. She 
comes from what some people on the coast would call ``flyover 
country,'' Michigan or Ohio. She grew up in a small town in Georgia.
  She went to college at Spelman, one of the best schools in the 
country. She was a Marshall and a Truman Scholar in England. She got 
her Ph.D. at Berkeley, and now she is teaching at Michigan State. And 
that tells me she has a sense of this country.

  And he criticized her because of her emphasis on international 
relations. I like it that we have somebody at the Fed that not only 
knows the country, knows the great industrial Midwest in Michigan or 
Ohio--sort of the same in some ways. I like it that she studied on the 
west coast. I like it that she studied abroad. I like it that she spent 
time overseas learning about banking in economics and other countries, 
instead of the cookie-cutter people we always get on the Federal 
Reserve. Someone very important, speaks very seriously, has a good Ivy 
League education, but they don't know real people. And Lisa Cook knows 
real people.
  She has years of research and international experience with monetary 
policy, banking, and financial crises. She has served as an economist 
under administrations to both parties, and as I said, she has support 
from across the political spectrum. All kinds of people endorsed her. 
They sent more letters supporting her than any Fed nom that I remember 
in front of this Banking Committee, and I have been on the Banking 
Committee a decade and a half.
  She has demonstrated her commitment to Fed independence, the 
importance of making decisions based on fact. She agrees with Chair 
Powell that the Fed's most important task right now is to tackle 
inflation. She believes:

       A strong and resilient financial system supports American 
     families, businesses, and our economy.

  Those are her words.
  Take a moment again and let me go back to why this is historical: the 
first Black woman in 109 years to serve in the Federal Reserve. Think 
about that. Think about that: the first Black woman in 109 years. This 
country is 12 percent Black. We have had dozens and dozens and dozens 
of Fed noms, yet we are going to need--probably need the Vice President 
to come in here and cast the tie-breaking vote because every single 
Republican, everybody on this side of the aisle, sitting behind every 
one of these desks is voting against the first African-American woman 
ever on the Federal Reserve. Spelman College, Truman Scholar, Marshall 
Scholar, Ph.D. at Berkeley, tenure at one of America's great 
universities, Michigan State University--and they say she is not 
qualified? And Judy Shelton was? Really.
  She will protect the Fed's independence. She knows that workers drive 
our economic growth. She, like this President, understands you focus on 
workers, you put workers at the center of our economy. That is the kind 
of Fed governor she is going to be. She understands when everyone 
participates in our economy, it grows faster and stronger for all 
Americans.
  We need her on the job today. I would add the other Senator from 
Michigan is here who has been a strong, strong supporter of Professor 
Cook. I join my two colleagues from Michigan and everybody on this side 
of the aisle to support Lisa Cook for the Federal Reserve.