Saule Omarova, Biden’s OCC pick, faces Senate committee: LIVE UPDATES

Pat Toomey, R-Pa., A member of the Banking Committee Rankings, clashed with currency candidate Saule Omarova’s auditor at a hearing Thursday over a proposal they made in a paper about the transfer of all private “sight deposit” banking to the Federal Reserve wrote.

Sight deposit accounts are the common checking and savings accounts that most Americans have with private banks.

This paper was written in the context of an ongoing academic debate on the digitization of the dollar, Omarova said when asked if she stood by the proposal.

“The particular phrase that got so much attention was actually that I was quoting a title, the title of a book someone else wrote,” Omarova said of a sentence in her newspaper that her suggestion was “banking, like we know it would quit effectively. “

But Toomey responded with another quote from the article: “This article accordingly advocates the full migration of sight deposits” to the Federal Reserve, Toomey said, quoting Omarova.

“The problem this paper was trying to solve was if we let currency digitize … Community and medium-sized banks will inherently lose positions,” Omarova continued, before Toomey interrupted again.

“They advocated losing all of their deposits,” Toomey shot back, reiterating that her article says she prefers to move all deposits to the Federal Reserve.

“As legal scholars, we write in a special way,” said Omarova. “My job as an academic was to push the boundaries of academic debate and identify possible options for Congress.”

“But that’s what you recommended, and it doesn’t seem like a coincidence, that any of these thought experiments or academic ideas … and a corresponding restriction on the freedom of individual Americans and institutions.” said Toomey. “To say now that you may not really be into these things is hard to believe.”

https://www.foxnews.com/live-news/saule-omarova