Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy cited Europe’s energy crisis in making the case against Sarah Bloom Raskin, the climate hawk nominated by President Joe Biden for a top regulatory position at the Federal Reserve.
Europe’s woes illustrate the shortsightedness of policies aimed at curbing fossil production of the kind that Raskin might pursue at the central bank, Cassidy argued in an interview with the Washington Examiner.
Cassidy, who represents leading oil refiner Louisiana in Congress and sits on the Senate Environment and Natural Resources Committee, said that the United States should leverage its domestic oil and gas to displace dirtier competitor fuels to reduce global reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Raskin, Biden’s pick for the vice chairwoman of supervision at the Fed, appeared before the Senate Banking Committee on Thursday to answer questions about climate policy and the central bank. Raskin has expressed in multiple venues her belief that the central bank should impose requirements on financial institutions to consider climate change risks as they weigh investment decisions and has opposed involving oil and gas companies in certain Federal Reserve lending programs, having called fossil fuels a “dying” industry.
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“If there’s ever a time we can see the shortsightedness of that, it’s now,” Cassidy said, referring to rising oil and gas prices, as well as the volatile energy situation that Europe is facing in conjunction with its reliance on Russian natural gas.
“Somebody is going to be using oil and natural gas. If it’s produced in the U.S., it uses our environmental standards,” he added. “If it’s produced in Iraq, Iran, or Russia, it uses theirs.”
Cassidy also said Raskin’s approach to regulatory policy would contribute to “uncertainty” about the investment in fossil fuels and disadvantage domestic production while doing nothing to mitigate emissions elsewhere.
“Whatever the Fed does, they can only go as far as the borders of our country,” Cassidy said.
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A number of other Republicans have opposed Raskin’s nomination, including Banking Committee ranking member Pat Toomey, arguing that climate change policy has nothing to do with the central bank.
But Raskin insisted during her nomination hearing that her vision of the Fed is not one that picks “winners and losers,” but one that helps banks manage risk.
“It is inappropriate for the Fed to make credit decisions and allocations,” Raskin said. “Banks choose their borrowers, not the Fed. It’s inappropriate for the Fed to choose winners and losers. Doing so is not the proper institutional role of the Fed. That’s a cardinal principle of Fed supervision.”
