-9999

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. KIM. Mr. President, I rise today to raise my concerns about a vote we are about to take on the nomination of Stephen Miran for the Board of the Federal Reserve.

I rise because the scarcest resource that we have in politics right now is trust, and, unfortunately, trust is also the most important resource we need to heal our broken Nation.

I took part in a hearing 2 weeks ago for the nomination of Dr. Miran. I have had a chance to be a part of a lot of different confirmations here during my time in the Senate so far, and I have heard a lot of different crazy things, but, still, one part of this hearing really stood out to me.

Now, mind you, this is someone who previously said:

To pretend that one can easily shift between highly political and allegedly nonpolitical roles without letting political biases inform policy is at best naive--and at worst sinister.

Those are the words of Dr. Miran himself talking about the concerns of politicization of the Federal Reserve, about the inability to be able to separate some of our political biases from the work that needs to happen at the Fed if we have people who are too close to the White House, too close to the President.

He is someone who criticized previous Democratic nominees to the Fed positions for their closeness to Democratic Presidents and for serving in their administrations. He even called for a cooling-off period that would ban service in the executive branch following service on the Fed Board.

But in this hearing, we heard something altogether different, and it is something that caught my attention, which is that Dr. Miran, who currently serves at the White House as the top economic adviser to President Trump, serving as the head of the Council of Economic Advisers, has no problem with himself being nominated for this role on the Fed Board.

In fact, because this role is to serve the remainder of a term on the Fed Board, which is a few months, Dr. Miran has stated and confirmed to us in the hearing that he will not resign his position at the White House, even if he takes upon this role of serving on the Federal Reserve Board. He will instead take a leave of absence from the White House, which means that he will technically still be attached to the White House, despite also serving on the Federal Reserve Board. This has never been done before.

I see this as a deep breach of trust. And I urge my colleagues, especially my Senate Republican colleagues, to demand that Dr. Miran resign from the White House if he is confirmed. This should be a requirement.

I asked Dr. Miran how he can square his past statements about concerns about the revolving door between politics and, in particular, the White House and nominees to Fed positions. He downplayed it and said, oh, he was just talking about a package of reforms that hadn't passed yet and that he shouldn't be held to the standard that he himself put forward.

I will be honest with you. It is straight-up painful to watch. He tried to excuse his behavior, saying that his attorneys had advised him to take this leave of absence. He was saying he was just doing what his attorneys told him to do. That is misleading. What he didn't say is that these attorneys are telling him what is best for his career, not what is best for the American people.

I wanted to share the story because it is one of the most blatant examples that I have seen in my time in the Senate so far of a lack of integrity, to twist yourself in knots because you want a job, to betray beliefs that you previously stated that you hold central to your beliefs of the work that we are doing just because you want a job.

I will be honest with you. I don't understand that, and I think that that is a dangerous behavior. What bothers me is that it really shows who a person is: Someone who is willing to quickly and easily betray their previously held strong beliefs, what does it say about other things that they believe in? Why should I believe what Dr. Miran said about his positions on our economy, on interest rates, about Fed independence when I see how quickly he is willing to change his mind when it suits him? He believes something until it is inconvenient for his career.

This raises a question for all of us to consider, which is, Why does it matter to the rest of us? Why should we care? DC is filled with ambitious people. What does it matter at the Federal Reserve?

For those of you watching, maybe you have never heard of Dr. Miran. Maybe many of us in this country can't name other members of the Federal Reserve Board, so why should we care about this nomination and what he has said?

What I hope we understand is the importance of this choice. We need to understand the role that the Federal Reserve plays in this moment and how Dr. Miran can almost singlehandedly reshape it.

The Federal Reserve, in short, sets monetary policy. The conditions that banks use to decide interest rates for your mortgage or auto loans, it sets them. Your banks, it regulates them to make sure that they are being responsible; the prices of your everyday goods, it determines the amount of money in circulation to keep those at a stable and reasonable cost. All of those things are important. They are part of our day-to-day lives. The impact of the Federal Reserve has significant impact on our ability to save and to build wealth so we can pass on to our kids and our grandkids.

Because these things are important, it is critical that the Federal Reserve be allowed to act independently--independent of political whims, independent of political pressures, independent of political motives. The Fed's job is to execute all of those important tasks with your priorities in mind.

We want people who have such a powerful role affecting our economy to be solely focused on what is best for our economy. That is why political interference must be constrained.

I hope all of us can agree that we don't want a President--or any politician, for that matter--being able to order interest rates to be lowered ahead of an election so that it could benefit them politically. Right? That is something I hope all of us can agree would be wrong. Then how is it that we can be OK with someone still listed as an employee at the White House to sit on the Federal Reserve Board? Oh, and the reason he gives, that this is a temporary appointment, that just makes things worse.

Dr. Miran is hoping to get President Trump to nominate him for the full term after this temporary term ends, but because he is staying on the White House staff on a leave of absence, he is doing so to hedge his bets just in case that doesn't work out for him, just in case President Trump decides to nominate someone else for the next term next year.

This exposes the heart of the problem, which is that this vote that we are about to take here in the Senate--Dr. Miran thinks of this as just a tryout, as just an audition, as just an opportunity for him to be able to do this and try to stay on President Trump's good side, keeping his fingers crossed for Trump to approve of his work so that he gets the full nomination next year.

Of course--of course--he will feel pressure to do as Trump wants him to do in the interim about interest rates and feel beholden to him.

So either Dr. Miran can decide that he wants to remove himself from consideration of the full term next year or he should do what he himself has said that we should have, which is a ban on people being able to go through this resolving door. He should at least step up and say that he will resign his position at the White House if this vote confirms him for this position because these challenges and these conflicts of interests are exactly why Dr. Miran previously called for a ban on this resolving door between the Fed and the White House and the executive branch.

There are many other reasons for Senators to oppose this nomination, but I wanted to focus on this one because I believe a majority of Senators agree with this lack of independence with this decision by Dr. Miran to be able to continue to stay at the White House.

Stephen Miran had every opportunity to do the right thing and ensure no conflicts of interest occur, but he refused. He had the chance to earn the trust of the U.S. Senate and the American people, but he refused.

But we here in this Chamber can do the right thing. If Dr. Miran wants his nomination to go forward, he should commit to resigning from the White House; otherwise, this Chamber should not move and vote his nomination through.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source