Saule Omarova, President Biden’s controversial pick to be comptroller of the currency, withdrew her nomination for the post on Tuesday amid both Republican and Democratic backlash over her academic writings, which include advocating for the end of banking “as we know it.”
During her confirmation hearing in the Senate Banking Committee last month, lawmakers pointed to the Soviet born and raised Omarova’s academic papers proposing a shift away from consumer banking, by moving Americans’ finances from private banks to the Federal Reserve.
“My concern with Professor Omarova is her long history of promoting ideas that she herself describes as ‘radical,” Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) said of the Cornell University law professor during the hearing.
“I agree that they are radical. But I’d also describe them as socialist.”
She defended her writings as a part of a larger debate, arguing it was not what she planned to implement in the Treasury position.
In her letter taking her name out of consideration, Omarova said it was “no longer tenable” for her to continue with the process.
“It was a great honor and a true privilege to be nominated by President Biden to lead the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency overseeing the US national banking system,” she wrote.
“I deeply value President Biden’s trust in my abilities and remain firmly committed to the Administration’s vision of a prosperous, inclusive, and just future for our country. At this point in the process, however, it is no longer tenable for me to continue as a Presidential nominee.”
While no Democrats openly spoke out against the nominee, centrist Democrat Sens. Jon Tester (Mont.), Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.) and Mark Warner (Va.) voiced reservations behind the scenes, making her chances of confirmation very unlikely.
The three Democratic members of the Senate Banking Committee told Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), the panel’s chairman, that they opposed Omarova’s nomination to the post, Axios reported.
Sens. John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.) and Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) also opposed her nomination, according to Axios. And even Biden’s Treasury secretary Janet Yellen had objected to the pick, the Wall Street Journal previously reported.
Omarova, who was born in Kazakhstan in the former Soviet Union and moved to the US in 1991 to pursue her Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin, has also slammed the culture on Wall Street as a “quintessential a–hole industry,” and praised the former Soviet Union’s lack of a gender pay gap.
In a Senate confirmation hearing held last week before the Senate Banking committee, Republicans grilled Omarova and painted her as a radical socialist.
“I don’t know whether to call you professor or comrade,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) snarked at one point during the hearing.
“I’m not a communist,” Omarova insisted. “I do not subscribe to that ideology. I could not choose where I was born.”
The professor denounced the communist regime of the USSR in the hearing, saying, “We can never have a repetition of that communist system anywhere in the world.”
Other members of the committee gave extreme critiques of Omarova, with Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) saying he could not “think of a nominee more poorly suited to be the comptroller of the currency based solely on [her] public positions, statements and the weight of [her] writings than [Omarova.]”
In Toomey’s opening remarks, the committee ranking member had accused Omarova of a “long history of promoting ideas that she herself describes as ‘radical.’ I agree that they’re radical and they can fairly be described also as socialist.
“She has a plan for the government, through the Fed, to replace the free market and setting what she calls, and I quote, ‘systemically important prices,’ end quote,” Toomey went on.
In his closing remarks, Toomey went on to label Omarova’s policies and ideas as “consistent with a socialist view of a command and control economy,” saying she is promoting “anti-Democratic ideas.”
“The idea that we would put a person with these views as the chief regulator of America’s national banks with the enormous powers that I just delineated, this is what is deeply disturbing and chilling,” he added, urging his colleagues not to support the confirmation.
Biden took aim at the GOP lawmakers for targeting her upbringing among their reasoning for pushing back on the nominee, arguing she “was subjected to inappropriate personal attacks” in his announcement stating he had accepted her request to remove herself from the process.
“As a strong advocate for consumers and a staunch defender of the safety and soundness of our financial system, Saule would have brought invaluable insight and perspective to our important work on behalf of the American people. But unfortunately, from the very beginning of her nomination, Saule was subjected to inappropriate personal attacks that were far beyond the pale. I am thankful to Chairman Brown for giving her a fair hearing and the opportunity to demonstrate her qualifications,” Biden said.
“The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency is a critical agency, supervising and regulating about 1,200 national banks in the federal banking system. I will continue to work to find a nominee for this position, and plan to make an announcement at a future date.”
