President Joe Biden’s controversial pick for a top banking regulatory position is set to be grilled next week by Republican lawmakers who accuse her of radicalism.
Saule Omarova, who was nominated to be comptroller of the currency, will testify before the Senate Banking Committee next Thursday in a highly anticipated hearing that could decide the fate of her nomination. The hearing is likely to be particularly tense given that Republicans have accused Omarova of opposing the existence of the banking industry and that Democrats, in turn, have accused Republicans of red-baiting.
A Republican Senate aide familiar with lawmakers’ plans revealed to the Washington Examiner on Thursday that GOP members will ask Omarova questions related to several of her past academic musings, including her advocation for the end of banking “as we know it.”
The hearing is set to be one of the highest-profile hearings the committee has held. The Senate aide said it will be very closely watched and that there will be “a lot of eyes on this hearing and this nominee.”
CONTROVERSIAL BIDEN BANK NOMINEE SAID ‘WE WANT’ OIL AND GAS COMPANIES TO GO BANKRUPT
She will face questions about a recent paper she authored, titled “The People’s Ledger: How to Democratize Money and Finance the Economy,” which puts forward a plan for “radically reshaping the basic architecture and dynamics of modern finance.”
Amid the pandemic, Omarova also raised the idea of a National Investment Authority, a new government bureaucracy that would act directly in financial markets to allocate “both public and private capital” to fight inequality, climate change, and other societal ills. The Senate aide said Omarova will be asked about the proposed agency.
This week a video of Omarova resurfaced from earlier this year where she said “we want” oil and gas companies to go bankrupt, although she also acknowledged the country couldn’t afford such a loss of jobs.
Omarova, who attended Moscow State University on the Lenin Personal Academic Scholarship, has also not turned over her college thesis, which was requested by Republicans on the Banking Committee.
The aide said that Republicans are not so much distressed by the thesis itself and the fact that she attended school in the USSR, but rather that the thesis was previously on her resume and now it no longer is, and that she is refusing to abide by congressional requests for the document.
Omarova and her allies have pushed back on the GOP over its opposition to her nomination.
Sen. Sherrod Brown, chairman of the Banking Committee, has accused Republicans of engaging in “red scare McCarthyism.” Omarova has asserted that she was an “anti-communist” while attending school in the USSR and that criticism for her nomination stems from her gender and Kazakh heritage.
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Every Democrat in the Senate must agree to her nomination for it to be approved given the party’s wire-thin majority, a notion that might be difficult given that some centrist members such as Sen. Jon Tester of Montana have already expressed concerns.
