White House stands by Fed nominee as Manchin jumps ship over her anti-US energy comments

President Biden is sticking by Sarah Bloom Raskin as his pick for Federal Reserve vice chair for supervision – even after Sen. Joe Manchin’s opposition Monday likely made her Biden’s second major financial regulator pick to be blocked by Senate Democrats in three months.

"Sarah Bloom Raskin is one of the most qualified people to have ever been nominated for the Federal Reserve Board of Governors," a White House official said. "We are working to line up the bipartisan support that she deserves, so that she can be confirmed by the Senate."

In the evenly divided Senate, the loss of even a single Democrat's vote puts Raskin's confirmation in peril. She could still make it to the Fed with the support of at least one Republican in the upper chamber. But it appears more likely than not Raskin will be the second major Biden financial regulator nominee in four months to go down in the face of Democratic opposition.

She follows former comptroller of the currency nominee Saule Omarova, whose nomination sputtered late last year. Defeating Raskin's nomination too would be a major victory for Senate Republicans, who argue Biden should stop pushing progressive activists for such positions. 

"The Biden administration needs to wake up and realize that this is a 50-50 Senate," a GOP aide told FOX Business. "If they choose to continue down their path of nominating self-proclaimed radicals and climate crusaders who want to dramatically reshape our independent financial regulatory system, it’ll be dark days ahead."

Manchin, D-W.Va., announced Monday he won't support Raskin's nomination because of her energy policies. 

"[H]er previous public statements have failed to satisfactorily address my concerns about the critical importance of financing an all-of-the-above energy policy to meet our nation's critical needs," Manchin said. 

Manchin is critical of the Biden administration's stance on fossil fuel regulations and accuses federal administrators of holding up American energy production as prices soar. 

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Raskin is a former deputy secretary of the Treasury and former governor of the Federal Reserve Board. She has faced fierce opposition from Republicans since her nomination for the vice chair of supervision role over a series of articles she wrote in recent years advocating for using financial regulators to move away from fossil fuels.

In a May 2020 piece published in The New York Times, Raskin argued that the Fed "should not be directing money to further entrench the carbon economy" by lending to oil and gas companies under the CARES Act as it did all other industries, saying that the central bank "is ignoring clear warning signs about the economic repercussions of the impending climate crisis by taking action that will lead to increases in greenhouse gas emissions at a time when even in the short term, fossil fuels are a terrible investment."

But with energy prices soaring, critics say Raskin's policy positions would cause even more damage at a time when U.S. gas prices are at record highs.

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Senate Banking Republicans boycotted the committee meeting last month when Raskin was supposed to come up for a vote, denying Democrats a quorum. 

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The Biden administration then accused the GOP of playing politics with the move, arguing that the Fed won't be able to fight inflation without all its pending board nominees, including Raskin. But Fed Chairman Jerome Powell told the Banking Committee last week that the central bank is still able to do its job without the nominees. 

The Democrat-led committee is still standing with Raskin too. A spokesperson for Chairman Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, issued a statement Monday saying that "Senator Brown is working to move forward Ms. Bloom Raskin’s nomination with bipartisan support, as Ms. Bloom Raskin has earned twice before."

Omarova withdrew her nomination in December after she couldn't get enough support from Senate Democrats. Republicans alleged that Omarova refused to submit her college thesis on Marxism and attacked her for controversial statements, including arguing that it is in America's best interest for coal, oil and gas industries "to go bankrupt if we want to tackle climate change."

FOX Business' Edward Lawrence contributed to this report.