[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 103 (Tuesday, June 13, 2023)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2061-S2062]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                     Nomination of Jared Bernstein

  Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I rise to urge my colleagues to join me in 
supporting the nomination of Dr. Jared Bernstein to be Chairman of the 
Council of Economic Advisers, or CEA.
  Dr. Bernstein is highly qualified, with close to four decades of 
economic experience. He has devoted his career to working on economic 
policies that ensure growth reaches all Americans, fighting to make our 
economy fairer--something there is a lot of talk about in here but not 
enough action.
  Since the beginning of the Biden administration, he served as a 
member of CEA. Before that, his experience, again, tells the story. He 
served in various senior-level roles inside and outside government--
chief economist and economic policy adviser to then-Vice President 
Biden; Deputy Chief Economist, Department of Labor; a senior fellow at 
the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities; economist at the Economic 
Policy Institute--all the kinds of qualifications that feed into this 
job.
  Dr. Bernstein is widely respected by his peers from both sides of the 
aisle. I want to really make that clear. Before his nomination 
hearing--and I chair the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban 
Affairs, from which he came. Before that hearing, seven--seven--former 
CEA chairs--the only one that didn't is long, long, long retired. I 
don't know if he was even asked. But seven former CEA chairs, who 
served in Republican administrations, wrote to the committee in support 
of his nomination. Three of them served under President Trump.
  Think of that. Seven Republican former CEA chairs--still Republicans, 
most of them, much more conservative than Jared Bernstein--they all 
wrote a letter together, initiated by one of the Trump nominees, one of 
the Trump CEA chairs, Kevin Hassett. He led the effort. He told the New 
York Times:

       I disagree with Jared about a lot, and Jared and I have 
     been disagreeing about things for 20 years. But he really is 
     a fundamentally good person who tries to figure things out 
     with an open mind, and [sometimes he] changes his mind.

  That is really all you want from a CEA chair.
  Again, President Trump's chief economist said that Jared Bernstein 
has an open mind and changes his mind. That is precisely the kind of 
openness to ideas from anyone, of any party or point of view, that we 
should all want in an economic adviser.
  Despite Dr. Bernstein's years of experience, despite his impeccable 
credentials, and despite receiving support from seven--I believe the 
most recent seven--former CEA chairs serving in Republican 
administrations, my Republican colleagues on the Banking, Housing, and 
Urban Affairs Committee all voted no to Jared Bernstein.

  Now, the decision to vote against his nomination is partisanship for 
the sake of partisanship, and I will give you an example. This sort of 
tells the whole story, Mr. President. The Banking and Housing Committee 
has a tradition of members voting for the President's pick. This isn't 
the Secretary of the Treasury. This isn't the Secretary of Labor. There 
are major disagreements. This isn't the head of the EPA.
  This is essentially the President's personal economic adviser. So 
regardless of ideology, we support that, as I did--and I will get to 
that in a second--with the Trump nominees. Whom the President picks, we 
support in this body. It is one of the good traditions of the Senate. 
Not all traditions are good here. That is one of the good traditions of 
the Senate.
  In 2017, I voted for Kevin Hassett, President Trump's nominee to 
serve as CEA Chair. I wasn't wild about Kevin Hassett. I liked him as a 
person. I wasn't wild about his ideology. He much too much believed 
that if you cut taxes on rich people and you give corporations all 
these tax breaks, it will trickle down and grow the economy.
  I didn't buy that. I still don't buy that. We saw that huge tax cut. 
All it did was make rich people richer, make corporations move jobs 
overseas more quickly. It never trickles down to help middle-class 
workers. It never honors the dignity of work. We know that,

[[Page S2062]]

but, nonetheless, because the President of the United States, duly 
elected, picked him as his Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers 
and Kevin Hassett was honest, he was credentialed--he just was wrong on 
issues, but that shouldn't stop us from supporting for that position.
  In 2021, Pat Toomey, the ranking member of the Housing, Banking, and 
Urban Affairs Committee, voted for Cecelia Rouse, President Biden's CEA 
nomination. The way I voted for a more conservative economist than I 
wanted, Senator Toomey voted for a more liberal economist than he 
wanted because she was qualified, she was credentialed, and she was an 
honest person.
  Next step: The Senate confirmed both of them--Dr. Hassett's 
nomination, 81 to 16. I led our side of the aisle, with my fellow 
Democrats here, in an overwhelming--only 16 of them voted against, out 
of 48 or 49 then, because I stood in the committee and said: We owe 
this to the White House. The tradition is such in the Senate that you 
support the Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers.
  Dr. Rouse's nomination passed 95 to 4. Senator Toomey did the same.
  So we all used to agree in this body until somebody made it much more 
partisan. Never before in this nomination was there this kind of 
partisanship. We have agreed that the President is entitled to have his 
choice of CEA Chair.
  I see no reason why that should change today. Dr. Bernstein's 
Republican peers and Democratic peers all came together and supported 
him. There is no reason the Senate shouldn't, in that same bipartisan 
fashion, vote to confirm his nomination. There are no really good 
reasons at all to do that.
  I urge my colleagues to support Dr. Jared Bernstein's nomination to 
be Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers.