Manchin says Dems should take Republican deal on Fed nominees

West Virginia Joe Manchin, the most conservative Democrat in the Senate, is complicating President Joe Biden’s plan to place a former federal regulator and climate policy advocate on the Federal Reserve board.

Senate Republicans are holding up a slate of five Fed nominees the White House has asked to clear over one of them: Sarah Bloom Raskin. For weeks, Republicans have said they need more time to question Raskin, a former Fed governor and deputy Treasury secretary.

But they have offered to immediately clear the other four nominees.

Now, after a weekslong standoff, Manchin is saying his party should consider the Republican offer, enough to make Democrats nervous in an evenly split chamber where they can’t afford to lose one vote.

“If they’re willing to move four out of five? Take it and run with it. It’s a win,” Sen. Joe Manchin said. “I’ll take a win any time I get it.”

His comments, first reported by Politico and confirmed by CNBC, agitate an ongoing political battle led by Senate Banking Committee Chairman Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, and his Republican counterpart, Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania.

The two have clashed since early February over Biden’s choice of Raskin to serve as the Fed’s vice chair for supervision, one of the country’s most powerful bank regulators.

Toomey, the banking committee’s ranking member, persuaded his GOP colleagues to boycott a vote on the president’s candidates to the central bank out of opposition to Raskin and her outspoken support for climate policies and criticism of the U.S. energy industry.

Republicans have raised questions about Raskin’s work for financial technology company Reserve Trust after it managed to obtain unique access to the Fed’s payments system during her tenure. Democrats say their candidate has answered hundreds of questions, has been more than forthcoming with the Republicans, and see their qualms over Reserve Trust as a front for their true energy-based worries.

The GOP says they are open to a vote on Biden’s other four nominees, including Fed Chair Jerome Powell and Fed Governor Lael Brainard.

But Brown and the White House are standing by Raskin, saying any vote on the president’s Fed nominees must include them all.

The panel can’t move the nominations to a full vote in the Senate without a quorum in the committee, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Thursday, adding that the Republicans’ refusal to attend prevents the majority from moving forward because of procedural rules.