Senate Republican: Powell should leave Fed, ‘cash in’
Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) on Tuesday said he hopes that Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell will depart the central bank at the conclusion of his term next month.
Powell’s term as chair is set to end on May 15, but he has previously said he would continue as a board member until the resolution of a criminal probe related to recent renovations at the Fed.
Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, dropped her probe into Powell’s handling of spending on Fed renovations on Friday.
“I hope not, quite honestly,” Cramer said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” when host Joe Kernen asked whether Powell ought to stay on after his term as chair expires.
Powell’s term on the board ends in January 2028. Fed chairs typically don’t stay on the board once their tenure as chair ends.
Cramer, a member of the Senate Banking Committee, noted that precedent, saying that now would be a “good time for [Powell] to cash in, if you will, on his experience and his Rolodex and his notoriety” in the private sector.
The North Dakota Republican added, “He’s certainly earned that opportunity.”
A vacancy on the Fed’s board would give President Trump an opportunity to nominate a candidate who agrees with the president’s desire for more interest rate cuts. Since returning to office last year, Trump has frequently urged Powell to implement rate cuts.
Powell was a partner at the Carlyle Group between his time at the Treasury Department in the early 1990s and when then-President Obama nominated him to the Fed’s board of governors in 2011. Last year, he disclosed wealth of up to $75 million, according to Forbes .
In announcing the conclusion of her investigation last week, Pirro noted that she asked the Fed inspector general (IG) to investigate the project — which was subject to cost overruns due to increased material and labor costs, among other reasons, according to the central bank.
“The IG has the authority to hold the Federal Reserve accountable to American taxpayers. I expect a comprehensive report in short order and am confident the outcome will assist in resolving, once and for all, the questions that led this office to issue subpoenas,” Pirro wrote on the social platform X .
The closing of the probe opened the door for Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) to back the nomination of Kevin Warsh to succeed Powell as Fed chair. Tillis had previously said he could not vote to move Warsh’s nomination from the Banking Committee to the full Senate until the investigation ended.
Regarding Warsh’s nomination, Cramer noted that the Banking panel has a markup scheduled for Wednesday at 10 a.m. EDT, during which he expects that Warsh will receive enough votes to gain passage to the entire upper chamber.
“I would think that as soon as [Senate Majority Leader John] Thune (R-S.D.) brings his nomination up, he’ll be confirmed, and fortunately, there’ll be no gap between the end of Jay Powell’s term and Kevin Warsh’s term,” the Republican senator added.
Updated at 7:27 p.m. EDT
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