It’s at all times dangerous to divvy up the spoils of war before achieving victory, however the GOP’s congressional leadership appears to be moving in that direction anyway.
So confident they’ll take the bulk within the House and possibly the Senate in Tuesday’s midterms, key members have been quietly plotting how you can make life difficult for the Biden administration, particularly on its radicalized economic agenda.
Sure, even within the best-case scenario (winning each chambers), Republicans will face long odds pushing through recent laws. They still need President Biden’s signature and can likely lack a veto-proof majority within the Senate.
Yet individuals who have spoken to GOP leadership tell me plans are taking shape to attack economic policy enacted while Biden and the Dems enjoyed a majority in Congress for 2 long and disastrous years.
Again, nothing revolutionary, but Republicans feel they’ll shape the controversy. Put bills on Sleepy Joe’s desk demanding he end his war on domestic oil production, which has helped fuel massive inflation, and others to loosen his anti-business regulatory agenda that has stymied growth because the economy falls into recession.
They’ll block lefty nominees to key Cabinet and regulatory posts that need Senate approval (bye-bye to far-left telecom lawyer Gigi Sohn on the FCC), and wield Congress’s power of the purse (no more stimulus checks or tax increases) to cut back spending and spur some growth.
Then Republicans will turn to a different regulatory agency: The Securities and Exchange Commission.
Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler has transformed REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
Gary Gensler, a former Wall Street banker and academic, is the chair of the agency, appointed by Sleepy Joe nearly two years ago supposedly to guard investors from scammers.
As a substitute, Gensler is transforming the SEC in ways not even moderate Dems on Wall Street had ever imagined. He’s launched an all-out war against the crypto industry that’s stifling innovation because developers don’t know if their digital coins related to block-chain technology will lead to an SEC lawsuit. He desires to remake the structure of the stock market that appears to be working just fantastic because progressives think Wall Street is making an excessive amount of money.
And that’s probably not the worst of it.
He and his Dem colleagues on the commission approved a cockamamie set of standards imposed by the Nasdaq stock market that is meant to make every listed company disclose and meet progressive board-diversity mandates. (Noticeably exempted: All those Chinese firms listed on the exchange as Nasdaq slipped in a loophole where they’ll skip appointing members of the country’s oppressed ethnic minorities.)
Now he desires to make the Nasdaq model de rigueur across corporate America. In documents to investors, Gensler wants public firms to make sweeping disclosures on how they’re reducing their carbon footprint, on top of showing the racial and ethnic makeup of their workforce.
Its questionable how any of this gets to the SEC’s core mission of protecting investors, or results in better-run firms. But with Dems in charge, Gensler is full steam ahead as he seeks to kiss as much as progressives, including his patron, lefty Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren. Gensler is angling to be Treasury secretary when the present occupant, Janet Yellen steps down as expected next 12 months.
Gensler has been kissing as much as progressives like Sen. Elizabeth Warren as he attempts to turn into the following Treasury Secretary.AP Photo/Charles Krupa
A Republican congressional sweep negates the Gensler Treasury possibility, I’m told. The Senate will hold hearings on what the GOP believes is his radical transformation of the agency.
He and his deputies will face scrutiny by the House Financial Services Committee that will be run by North Carolina Republican Patrick McHenry, in addition to questioning by subcommittees. By keeping Gensler and his lackeys on the Hill, they’ll have less time to muck up the markets.
Zeroing out ESG
Within the Senate, plans are also in place to place so-called riders on must-pass spending bills to zero out Gensler’s ESG/diversity stuff. Biden can have a selection of either agreeing to the partial defunding of SEC activities and signing spending bills, or face a legislative stalemate.
One other set of hearings will goal the company enablers of the Dems’ progressive economic agenda. Retiring Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Pat Toomey has been requesting information from firms involved in Environmental Social Governance investing, which is a giant moneymaker on Wall Street but, he believes, anti-consumer and politically fraught.
Toomey and top Republicans imagine this investment method has forced firms to adopt progressive positions on the environment and other contentious issues on the worst possible time. By late 2021, inflation and gas prices particularly were already spiking due to Biden’s anti-drilling energy agenda while pandemic lockdowns ended.
The next war in Ukraine further eroded oil inventories and added more price pressure. Asset managers pushing ESG mandates made a foul situation exponentially worse by threatening to direct money away from energy producers that didn’t further reduce production.
Once in the bulk, Republicans can have subpoena power over massive asset managers, and to compel Wall Street firms to show over the data and defend their practices at public hearings — which I’m told is the plan.
After all, all bets are off if the GOP loses Tuesday. the duty of compressing Biden’s leftward lurch on the economy becomes tougher if the GOP takes just the House.
But Republicans are considering big and, in the event that they’re right, let’s get able to rumble!
