00:00So, we should not be having this hearing today. And here's the context. First, over the past year,
00:09President Trump has racked up one economic failure after another, and Americans know that.
00:16Consumer sentiment just hit its lowest level on record ever. Inflation is rising, and families
00:24are paying more for groceries, more for health care, more for utilities, more for housing,
00:28all thanks to Trump's chaotic tariffs and one big, beautiful bill. And now his war with Iran is
00:36putting American troops in harm's way and further driving up the cost of nearly everything here at
00:43home. Second, in your testimony, you said it's perfectly fine for elected officials to state
00:50their views on interest rates. But that is not what Donald Trump is doing. The president has
00:56repeatedly and illegally attempted to take over the Fed. His bogus attacks on Governor Lisa Cook
01:03and Chair Powell were designed to threaten all the members of the Fed to do Trump's bidding and open
01:12more spots for Trump flunkies. Why try to end the independence of the Fed? Because Trump's economic
01:21failures are causing him political problems. And he wants the Fed to use monetary policies to
01:28artificially juice the economy in the short term. And this is his last chance to do that before the
01:35November elections. Having a sock puppet in charge of the Fed would also give the president access to the
01:43Fed's powerful authorities to enrich himself, his family and his Wall Street buddies. It could mean
01:51granting special accounts to his family's crypto company or bailouts to his friends on Wall Street if they
01:58get into trouble. In other words, a Fed under Donald Trump's control creates more opportunities for Trump's
02:07corruption. Third, the nominee before us today, Kevin Warsh, is uniquely ill suited for the job as Fed chair.
02:16In our meeting last week, we discussed the 2008 financial crash where 8 million people lost their jobs,
02:2610 million people lost their homes, and millions more lost their life savings. Giant banks, however,
02:33got hundreds of billions of dollars in bailouts. Mr. Warsh was a Fed governor from 2006 to 2011. That's
02:42before, during, and after the crash. And he said to me that he has no regrets about anything he did.
02:51So let's take a deeper dive into Mr. Warsh's record. In the years leading up to the 2008 financial crisis,
02:59he was an enthusiastic cheerleader for credit default swaps and complex securitizations. He dismissed repeated
03:08and increasingly urgent concerns from housing advocates across the country regarding subprime
03:16mortgages. He refused to use the Fed's authorities to address the risks that were building in the
03:23financial system. And when the crisis hit and the economy blew up, Warsh took on the job of Wall
03:31Street's personal liaison on the Fed board. He was quick to respond to concerns from Wall Street CEOs,
03:39and he worked tirelessly to arrange multi-billion dollar bailouts for them with nothing for American
03:47families. No regrets, he says. No regrets. After the crash, most people on the Fed saw millions of
03:56Americans unemployed. People had lost their homes and said now might be a good time to lower rates and
04:03make the cost of borrowing cheaper for businesses to avoid more layoffs and make it cheaper for Americans
04:11who are worried about paying their mortgages or their credit cards. But not Mr. Warsh. Nope. He wanted
04:18to keep interest rates high. And he sang the same song for more than a decade, even as the economy
04:25struggled.
04:26When the job of Fed chair became available during Trump's first term as president, Warsh held on to his
04:34high interest rate inflation hawk views and Trump passed him by. Regretful, he soon reversed course and
04:43called for the Fed to pause interest rate hikes. Then once Trump left office, Mr. Warsh flipped again
04:53and was even criticizing the Fed for cutting rates in the fall of 2024. But as soon as Donald Trump
05:01became
05:01president a second time, Warsh reversed himself once more and began shouting from the rooftops about how
05:10the Fed should cut interest rates. Evidently, he learned his lesson. This time around, he sucked up to
05:17Donald Trump to snag his dream job. Mr. Chairman, last week, every single Democratic member of this committee
05:25asked that you postpone this hearing and instead conduct oversight on the president's role in
05:31directing bogus criminal probes into Chair Powell and Governor Cook. The Senate should not be aiding
05:38and abetting Donald Trump's illegal takeover of the Fed by installing his chosen sock puppet as chair.
05:47It's an invitation for corruption and for economic catastrophe. We have the power to stop it and we
05:55should be using that power. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
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