GOP Senator Praises Trump Fed Nominee — Then Tells Him to His Face Why He Can’t Vote for Him Yet

Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) praised Kevin Warsh, President Donald Trump’s nominee to serve as the next chairman of the Federal Reserve, during his confirmation hearing on Tuesday before informing Warsh that he cannot presently vote for him, citing the Trump administration’s continued harassment of incumbent Chairman Jerome Powell.

“Mr. Warsh, congratulations. You can’t count this as a date with Jane, particularly this one. I think probably the first hearing was a little less acrimonious. I’m not going to ask you anything; you can take a break and get ready for the bludgeoning on the other side. They’re going to beat you until you bleed, and then they’re going beat you for bleeding. I’m going to talk about what’s preventing me from being in a position to vote for you until-, we’ve spent time together in my office. You have extraordinary credentials. They’re impeccable. I think the way you’re dealing with the ethics issue is strong. Problem I have is where we are right now. And we start, I start by saying I loved your opening statement. I love your focus on the independence of the Fed. I love the idea of Fed independence with respect to achieving the dual mandate, but Fed transparency on so many other things that the Fed does that frankly we’re all frustrated with: bank examination supervision being some among them that I think we should have more insight into,” began Tillis before continuing:

Mr. Chair, I’d like to submit for the record two executive orders under President Trump, one in 2020 and one in 2025 talking about making federal architecture beautiful again and focusing on trying to preserve the integrity of old buildings.

And, Mr. Chair, I will be submitting an analysis, but if we can go to slide two nd turn it upright, much has been made about the building project that has Senator-, or that has Chair Powell under investigation. I’m not going to get into the details except to say that I used to work for a firm that did audit and compliance. So I’m naturally wired to go back from the ground up and figure out what the deal is. Here’s what I know: the Martin Building has been conflated into this project to make it a $4 billion building. Even if you put the Martin Building in, it’s a $3 billion building. The reality is what we’re talking about is the Eccles Building and the East Building for which, bring that up higher, Jack, you’re a tall guy so people can see it. These are the overruns, and these overrun occurred in part because the cost of inputs went up 69% since the original estimate. Asbestos was identified. Remediation was required. Pylons had to be built underneath the building because turns out they used it as a landfill and they had a water table issue.

There were a variety of reasons why this building went over budget. As a matter of fact, if we put everybody in prison in federal government that had had a budget go over, we’d have to reserve an area roughly the size of Texas for a penal colony because of the way government projects work. And the reality is the overage of inflation adjust, it was about $730 million, the majority of which seems to be legitimate.

Next slide. Not acceptable, unfortunate, but legitimate. Now, what I’ve really got a problem with, and we’re talking about Fed independence –by the way, I think you’re going to be independent, you have to be, you got to convince 11 other people to vote with you, at least the majority, it’s a consensus organization you try to get the majority to,  most of these votes are 11 to 1; so if anybody thinks the president can appoint somebody and you unilaterally can control things, you’re going to be an unsuccessful chair, if history is any guide, and you’ve served under some of the best — so I know you’re gonna do it right.

The problem that I have here is that we had some U.S. attorney with a dream or assistant U. S. attorney thinking it would be cute to bring Chair Powell under an investigation just a few months before the position was going to be open. This happened this year. Normal course and speed, here’s how it works at the Fed. February, March, May the 15th, the term would have expired. We’d be having this hearing, you’d be getting confirmed. Custom also suggests that the sitting chair, even though he has two years left on his term, would have exited. But instead we have somebody who thinks a building project that went over by about 700 million dollars with a lot of what seemed to be justifications for it are holding up this whole process. It sounds like to me somebody over in the DOJ didn’t even check with the boss. The boss said on the same night that I said I can’t go forward until this bogus investigation is done with said he didn’t know anything about it. So we’ve got people in DOJ, over in the D.C. circuit or the D.C. district doing these investigations.

We have got to end this investigation. Big DOJ didn’t know about it, the president didn’t about it, let’s get rid of this investigation so I can support your confirmation. Mr. Warsh, the only thing I’ve found the least bit odd about you is you’ve never watched an episode of Seinfeld. You’ve spent so much time at being a rock-solid economist, that you’re not even taking time away for a little laugh like that. I look forward to supporting your nomination, and I look forward to this investigation being taken down. If the chair wants to have all of our subcommittees start looking at capital expenditure projects for the agencies that we’re overseeing, I think that’s a great idea. And I’d like to be on a committee specifically drilling down on this analysis. If somebody can prove me wrong, I’d be happy to make a criminal referral. But I don’t have the D.C. Circuit tell me a crime was committed when seven members on this committee said it wasn’t, including the chair. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Watch above via CNN.

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