Republican Senators Accuse Raskin of Shifting Her View on Fed’s Climate Role

(Bloomberg) -- Sarah Bloom Raskin repeatedly said Thursday that it's not the Federal Reserve's role to decide which industries deserve credit. Republican lawmakers, who are set to vote on her nomination to be Wall Street's top bank regulator, say those comments directly conflict with what she's said before.

At a hearing before the Senate Banking Committee that's weighing her confirmation, Pat Toomey, the top Republican on the panel, read a series of quotes from Raskin's previous writings and remarks that he said showed her calling for the central bank to intervene in the energy sector. Her past remarks on climate change have become a central point of GOP opposition to her nomination.

“You're saying something different this morning, but that's not what you've been saying in writing for several years now,” said Toomey. “There is no reasonable reading of these articles and speeches that can come to a conclusion other than that you want to be allocating capital away from those industries.”

In response to Toomey and other Republican senators, Raskin, who has deep experience in Washington as a former Treasury Department official and Fed governor, kept repeating versions of the same basic talking point:

“Banks choose their borrowers; the Fed does not,” she said. “The Fed should not pick winners and losers.”

Raskin has drawn much of the Republicans' ire since President Joe Biden nominated her alongside Lisa Cook and Philip Jefferson. They've joined Biden's other nominees -- Chair Jerome Powell to return for a second term and Fed Governor Lael Brainard to become vice chair -- who await the decisions of the Senate, which is split 50-50 along party lines.