Little Raven
On Walkabout
As Daniel Foster notes over at The Corner, the odds of a Bernanke nomination passing the Senate, while still good, are getting worse every day.
Do we need a new guy at the Fed? Is Volcker still up for the job?
I'll give Bernanke this much: we didn't collapse. Of course, there are lots of people that say we never would have collapsed anyway. And he certainly did and was complicit in lots of stuff that doesn't pass the smell test.Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Ver.), Bernanke's nemesis, has a hold on his nomination as do Sens. Bunning (R., Ky), DeMint (R., S.C.), and Vitter (R., La.) which means Bernanke will need 60 votes to break procedural deadlock. And with little more than a week before his term as Fed Chair expires, majority leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) has yet to schedule a vote.
Senators Byron Dorgan (D., N.D.) and Jeff Merkley (D., Ore.) have previously indicated they will vote against reconfirmation (Merkley did so when it came before the Senate Banking Committee in December). And today, Sen. Russ Feingold (D., Wisc.) and Sen. Barbara Boxer (D., Calif.) both added their names to the "no" roll.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D., R.I.) and Sen. Jim Inhofe (R., Okla.), by one measure the most liberal and the fourth most conservative senators, respectively, are currently a "leaning no" and a "no."
Sen. Richard Shelby (R., Ala.) is a no. Sen. Claire McCaskill (D., Mo.) is wishy-washy. Perhaps worst of all, Politico's Martin Kady is reporting that Reid himself is undecided, while the minority's offices across the aisle are "no-commenting" questions about whether they'll "whip" votes on the chairman's future.
Do we need a new guy at the Fed? Is Volcker still up for the job?