Indivisibles,

If there’s one thing we know about Republicans, it’s that they’re really really good at not doing their jobs.

And today, I’m sorry to report that Republicans have come up with yet another way to not do their jobs.

And it’s rapidly becoming a big problem.

It’s a bit of a long story, so I’m gonna go with my favorite format: the Q&A.

What is going on here?

About three months ago, President Biden nominated a slate of highly qualified and all-around excellent folks to the Federal Reserve. These are the people tasked with managing our economy, regulating banks and big corporations, and more. They’re important roles, and he made some great choices - Dr. Sarah Bloom Raskin, an enormously qualified economist who served in critical roles steering us through the Great Recession and would provide steady oversight of our financial system, and Dr. Lisa Cook, who will be the first Black woman on the Fed Board and who’s a leading scholar in reducing racial and gender disparities to improve economic growth.

After a hearing where the nominees got rave reviews, it seemed reasonable to assume they’d be voted out of committee and then get confirmed by the Senate.

Then… Republican Senators, led by Pat Toomey (R-PA) simply stopped showing up to the committee markup meetings. Like, literally just stopped coming to work. And according to the rules, that means there aren’t enough Senators present for a quorum to pass the nominees out of the committee.

That means that these nominations are stuck - even though we have every reason to believe that they would be passed out of committee and confirmed on the Senate floor IF we could just get a vote.

TL:DR; Republicans don’t have enough votes to reject these nominees - so instead they’re boycotting the process and weaponizing the rules to strand the nominations in committee.

OK, so why are Republicans doing this?

Republicans’ public objections focus on Sarah Bloom Raskin, an enormously qualified regulator who’s been confirmed to high-level roles in the past with bipartisan votes. Why? Because in the past, she’s spoken about the systemic risks that climate change poses to our economy. And so the oil and gas industry has decided to tank her nomination - and they’re putting a ton of money behind the Republicans on the Senate Banking Committee to do their dirty work.

But let’s take a step back and talk about the bigger picture. Right now, we’re seeing higher inflation as a result of a supply chain that was built to fail by greedy corporations and the ongoing disruptions related to the pandemic. Corporations and Wall Street have taken advantage of this to jack up prices, and have routinely bragged to their investors about their ability to pass on costs to consumers. Many of these same corporations, like Kroger, are showering their wealthy investors with stock buybacks, even while many of their employees struggle to afford the food they sell. 

Republicans are covering for their friends on Wall Street by blaming Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan for rising prices. The same American Rescue Plan that spurred one of the fastest recoveries from a recession in history. Now, despite all of their fearmongering about inflation, Republicans are intent on sabotaging federal agencies tasked with managing our economy. 

They are putting us in greater danger during a period of global instability.

If Republicans were serious about tackling inflation, they’d prioritize filling these jobs. But they’re not. Instead, they’re holding this bipartisan slate of highly-qualified nominees hostage so that they can do the oil and gas industry’s bidding with their bad faith objections to Sarah Bloom Raskin. 

If these nominees are so important, why haven’t we heard about them before? 

We haven’t talked to you about these nominees before because… well, it’s really, super-normal that nominees like this just move forward and get confirmed! Honestly, we’re pretty alarmed that this is an issue at all. It’s a new and dangerous case of Republicans weaponizing the rules to do everything they can to block President Biden’s agenda.

This is a scary precedent to set. If Republicans get their way on this, there’s no reason they’ll stop here. There are a LOT of nominees for any number of federal agencies and the judiciary who they could try this exact same tactic on. 

What are we going to do about this?

We need some good old-fashioned public outrage here. Republicans are sabotaging our economic recovery to do the bidding of their donors. They are quite literally refusing to show up to their jobs. That’s unacceptable in any other workplace in the country - and it should be unacceptable for Senators.

If you’re represented by one of the Republicans on this committee (ie, if you live in the Carolinas or the Dakotas, Pennsylvania, Louisiana, Idaho, Alabama, Tennessee, Wyoming, Kansas, or Montana), you should get in touch with them to demand Republicans on Senate Banking do their jobs.

And, I want to give a shout out to the Indivisibles who are already on the case. In Pennsylvania, Indivisible [names of groups] showed up at Pat Toomey’s office to protest his shenanigans. 

If you're not represented by one of those people, we need to make sure they don't get to do this on the sly. Share this great article on your social media and let your friends and family know what new ridiculousness the GOP is up to today. Then text INDIVISIBLE to 59798 so we can keep you up to speed on any new developments. And keep an eye on your own Senators: we need to make sure Senate Democrats don’t cave to this bad faith obstructionism from the other side. So far, they are standing united, and we need to keep it that way!

We’ve known for a long time that Republicans will take advantage of every loophole they can find to sabotage President Biden’s agenda, undermine good policy, and do the bidding of their donors. We need to push back hard, while this is still a trial balloon.

Thank you again for sticking with us through every twist and turn of this congress. Together, we’ll stop Republicans’ attempts at minority rule and make our country better for everyone.

In solidarity,

Leah

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