Senate Blocks Vote to Advance Biden Fed Nominee with History of Black Lives Matter Bullying

The Senate on Tuesday voted to block a Democrat motion to invoke cloture on Dr. Lisa Cook to become a member of the Federal Reserve board.

Senate Banking Committee Chairman Sherrod Brown requested a unanimous request to invoke cloture on Cook for an open Federal Reserve position. Banking Committee Ranking Member Pat Toomey (R-PA) rejected the motion, arguing that the Senate should vote on all three Federal Reserve nominees this week. Subsequently, the Senate held a failed vote to invoke cloture on Cook:

The Senate voted 47-51 not to invoke cloture and limit debate on the Federal Reserve nominee. Schumer voted no so that he could enter a motion to reconsider the nominee.

Toomey said in a statement on Tuesday that Cook has a history of “inflammatory” rhetoric, “zero experience in monetary policy,” and has failed to answer “basic questions” about how the Fed would rein in inflation:

Professor Cook, who has a history of inflammatory partisan rhetoric and extreme left-wing political advocacy, will further politicize an institution suffering from a credibility problem due to its involvement in controversial policy debates.

Professor Cook has nearly zero experience in monetary policy. She does have a PhD in economics. However, not a single one of her publications concerns monetary economics.

What’s 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’s answers to basic questions about what the Fed should do to tame inflation amount to nothing more than 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’.

 I’m concerned Professor Cook will undermine the Fed by straying away from the Fed’s limited responsibilities and into unrelated and highly charged political issues.

The vote to invoke cloture on Cook follows a Breitbart News report that the Michigan State interim provost and president promoted Cook in 2020 to full professorship after she had been denied full professorship. This among other issues regarding her academic career has raised questions about her qualifications for the post at the nation’s central bank.

Cook had also allegedly “lied” on her resume about writing an influential peer-reviewed paper in the American Economic Review.

Carlson said, “But, administrators at Michigan State granted her tenure anyway in the name of equity and equity is what Lisa Cook could bring to the Fed.”

Cook also has policy views that many Republicans consider controversial.

Cook gave a presentation in support of a bill that would create a commission to study and develop reparations proposals.

The Federal Reserve nominee also agreed with calls to have the Federal Reserve focus on targeting its federal funds rate to improve the black unemployment rate instead of the national employment rate.

Cook also called on the University of Chicago to fire its economics professor, Harald Uhlig, in June 2020 after Uhlig criticized the Black Lives Matter movement for its support of defunding the police. Cook accused Uhlig of “racial harassment.”

She claimed that “free speech has its limits.”