▶ 0:18:07Chair Crapo: I see that we have a quorum. This business meeting will commence. We meet today to vote on the nomination of scott bessent to be secretary of the treasury. Senator wyden and I have discussed that we will each give our opening remarks and then proceed immediately to a vote. If any members of the committee would like to make comments, they may freely do so.
▶ 0:18:39Chair Crapo: I will remain after the vote. Anyone who wishes to speak may speak at that time. Mr. bessent has decades of academic, professional, leadership experience relative to this position, as well as the gravitas, demeanor, and character to be an effective secretary. Mr.
▶ 0:18:58Chair Crapo: Bessent has thoughtfully and thoughtfully responded to our questions during the rigorous, diligent process in his hearing and in the course of that hearing has entered 200 plus questions for the record. Not including the subparts. These are questions that have been asked by members of this committee and have been responded to carefully buy him with thousands of documents. There is no doubt that Mr. bessent is an excellent choice for secretary of the treasury.
▶ 0:19:28Chair Crapo: He has my vote. In prior congresses, I've joined in voting for well-qualified candidates put forward by democrat president even though I didn't agree with all of the positions for which they advocated. I encourage my colleagues on both sides of the aisle today to join in advancing this well-qualified nominee. I now recognize senator wyden for his remarks.
▶ 0:19:56Sen. Wyden: Thank you, Mr. chairman. I want my colleagues to know why I strongly oppose this nominee. First, this nominee is not square on his taxes. Like others on wall street, he opted out of paying his fair share of his medicare taxes. The irs have gone to court twice to ban this particular scheme that Mr. bessent is using. Treasury policy says what Mr.
▶ 0:20:29Sen. Wyden: Bessent is doing is against the law. Apparently, he disagrees. Maybe he will pay his medicare taxes sometime down the road. This is an individual who is a billionaire. It won't be a hardship on him to pay his medicare taxes. My view is, you can't have a treasury secretary who doesn't abide by treasury policy. That is what you're going to have on day one if Mr. bessent is confirmed. That is number one.
▶ 0:21:00Sen. Wyden: Number two, I think Mr. bessent came to this committee completely unprepared to answer some of the most basic questions about tax policy. He was asked critically important one. Should wages be treated differently than wealth. This is the central debating question, colleagues, on questions about whether the ultra-wealthy should get a better deal than people who work for a living. Mr.
▶ 0:21:27Sen. Wyden: Bessent bobbed and weaved a little bit and basically said, that's just the way it is. Might as well have said, let them eat cake. That is what we are dealing with here. The last issue is what came in and writing last night provided by Mr. bessent.
▶ 0:21:47Sen. Wyden: According to news report's longtime trump advisor oris epstein ran a quid pro quo scheme during the 2024 campaign telling certain people seeking cabinet appointments that if they paid him hundreds of thousands of dollars he would push trump to nominate them. After reading these reports, I felt that the committee needed an answer to what actually happened. In december, I sent a letter to Mr. bessent and the trump transition with straightforward questions about this. Last week I asked Mr.
▶ 0:22:15Sen. Wyden: Bessent about it in our one-on-one meeting. He said Mr. epstein talk to him about payments for public relations, which is a sleazy way of pitching a quid pro quo. Mr. bessent is now giving a different answer in response to a written question after the hearing. His new answer is, nobody ever asked him about payments in exchange for an appointment. He still won't reveal who else in trump's orbit he talked to about it.
▶ 0:22:45Sen. Wyden: Colleagues, this smells. It is a significant question that warrants additional follow-up. For the reasons I outlined, I think we ought to have someone in this job who pays his medicare taxes. I think we ought to have someone who treats people who makes wages fairly and not just people who are well-to-do. Third, there are significant issues surrounding Mr. epstein and the nominee. I urge my colleagues to oppose this individual.
▶ 0:23:14Chair Crapo: Thank you, senator wyden. We are waiting for one more senator to arrive. We will proceed with the vote. While we are waiting for that, maybe we can have a colloquy on the points you made. I understanding is Mr.
▶ 0:23:43Chair Crapo: Bessent has made it very clear with regard to boris epstein that he never sought assistance from him and never paid him anything, directly or indirectly. I understand that you are now asking him to comment on what conversations may have been held with anyone else and he is not responding to those. The point is, I don't believe that you can discourage support for him, because he never, ever sought any assistance from Mr.
▶ 0:24:13Chair Crapo: Epstein or paid him anything, or anyone else anything, for his candidacy.
▶ 0:24:18Sen. Wyden: We have a quorum, but I would only say that his answer in writing is different than the answer he gave elsewhere. That is troubling enough particularly given the amount of corruption we are seeing associated with Mr. epstein.
▶ 0:24:33Chair Crapo: I see that we do have a quorum, so we will proceed to the vote. We have a very solid quorum. I move that the committee favorably report the nomination of the honorable scott bessent of south carolina to be treasury secretary. Is there a second? >> I second.
▶ 0:24:55Chair Crapo: Having been duly seconded, the clerk will call the roll. [clerk calling the roll]
▶ 0:26:14Clerk: The final tally is 16 ayes, 11 nays.
▶ 0:26:18Chair Crapo: The nomination is reported favorably. I appreciate all of your attendance at this meeting. The committee stands in recess. [gobble -- gavel falls] actually, if there are statements we will come back into session. Are there any statements? Senator welch.
▶ 0:26:44Sen. Welch: Mr. chairman, thank you. The issue of concern to me and my no vote today is the situation where there is an ongoing dispute between the taxpayer and the irs. The taxpayer will soon be the head of the irs as a virtue of serving as the secretary of the department of treasury.
▶ 0:27:14Sen. Welch: My view is it is in the interest of public confidence in the secretary that that tax dispute resolved before the full senate votes on his nomination. It would be very difficult for the public to be totally confident that this is an on the level resolution of the dispute when he would be the secretary of the treasury while the dispute is underway. My hope is Mr.
▶ 0:27:39Sen. Welch: Bessent will resolve the dispute before the senate votes in full on his nomination, and I reserve the right to take that into account with my vote on the floor. Thank you.
▶ 0:27:55Chair Crapo: Senator wyden.
▶ 0:27:56Sen. Wyden: My colleague from vermont, as usual, is making an important point. This is an issue that relates to a double standard. All over this country, small businesses, individuals, are paying medicare taxes.
▶ 0:28:16Sen. Wyden: What has concerned me from the outset is here we have a billionaire -- it is not as if it would work a hardship on him to pay his medicare taxes, and he has been unwilling and basically using what we talk about in this committee often. If you can put it off, put it off, put it off sometimes it goes away and you make money while you put it off. I thank my colleague with a very constructive suggestion and I'm interested in working with him on that.
▶ 0:28:43Chair Crapo: We will rotate. >> I want to express how enthusiastic I am about future secretary bessent's nomination. I've had the privilege of interviewing a few people in my lifetime now, and I can't share enough how encouraged I was with my interview with him on a personal basis. He's not only a leader, but understands the challenges of everyday families.
▶ 0:29:12Chair Crapo: He is a person who has lived the american dream and I think understands the struggles of everyday americans now as well. I like his priorities. His priorities to grow the economy, addressed the fiscal deficit, increase oil production, bring down the price of gas, groceries, rent, and mortgage ends so other americans, like him, can live the same american dream.
▶ 0:29:36Chair Crapo: I like his commitment to making the trump tax cuts permanent and commitment to making those people who carry a lunch pail to work. He has been very successful on wall street, but he is from rural america, small-town america. I'm so appreciative of his commitment that every american has that shot at the same american dream that so many of us have had.
▶ 0:29:56Chair Crapo: Thank you. Senator whitehouse.
▶ 0:30:00Sen. Whitehouse: Two points, if I may. 30 years ago nominees for cabinet positions withdrew their nominations for failing to pay probably hundreds of dollars, at worst thousands of dollars, in taxes. It earned the watergate appellation called nanny gate.
▶ 0:30:29Sen. Whitehouse: Here we are, 30 years later, and we have an individual who has dodged $900,000 in contributions to medicare. Which, to me, is very telling. It speaks to, as the ranking member has said, the double standard in america. If you are a billionaire, you are not expected to follow the rules. Everyone else is expected to follow the rules.
▶ 0:30:55Sen. Whitehouse: I agree we need an answer to the question, but it would seem the proper answer is while he is in position of the irs and treasury, he should pay his taxes. The conflict of interest in becoming the overseer of the irs, secretary of the treasury, is apparent. I think that is really significant. The other thing I wanted to mention is, I think we have underestimated what is going to happen as a result of climate change.
▶ 0:31:24Sen. Whitehouse: I think we have underestimated it badly. I think we underestimated it as the result of a largely fraudulent campaign of the fossil fuel industry to mislead the public about what's happening. We are now towards the end of a very long period of lies by the fossil fuel industry about what climate change really is, how it works, with the science is, and what is likely to happen. We are now entering the period of consequences. We are seeing those in florida in the insurance markets.
▶ 0:31:53Sen. Whitehouse: We are seeing those consequences in california in insurance markets. There is every reason to believe that an insurance crisis is looming. The former chief economist of freddie mac, which is not exactly a green organization and cares a lot about mortgages, has said and then testified that as the insurance markets melt down because climate change has made risk unpredictable, that cascades into a failure in
▶ 0:32:24Sen. Whitehouse: Mortgage markets, because you need insurance to get a mortgage. If you can't get a mortgage on your property unless you are a billionaire, and some other billionaire can come buy cash, but if you need to sell to someone, who like you needs a mortgage to afford the house, you don't have buyers any longer. That creates, in his phrase, a coastal property values crash.
▶ 0:32:53Sen. Whitehouse: Besides the coastal property values crash that he warned of, there is a wildfire property's value crash that is looming that wasn't considered then because the growth in wildfire risk has happened so explosively.
▶ 0:33:09Sen. Whitehouse: If you look at the combination of coastal property values crash risk and wildfire-adjacent property values risk, and you look at what that is already starting to do to insurance markets, and you look at the warnings that have come from many places, if you doubt me get the april issue of the economist magazine.
▶ 0:33:29Sen. Whitehouse: Again, not a green publication, warning that the foundations of the world's largest asset class, the real estate industry, are being shaken by what is taking place. This is not just a coastal problem, an american problem, this is a global problem and pretends significant global financial shock. As best I can tell, the nominee doesn't want to hear about it, is it interested, couldn't care less.
▶ 0:34:00Sen. Whitehouse: And, like the rest of the trump administration, is in with the fossil fuel industry which is on the cusp of causing very significant economic pain. For both of those reasons I voted no.
▶ 0:34:12Chair Crapo: Thank you, senator whitehouse. I would like to respond to some of the comments that have been made. With regard to the global warming issues, I don't think it is a fair characterization to say that the nominee doesn't care about global warming issues we face, but I guess that is an argument that we will be engaged in for some time beyond today's meeting.
▶ 0:34:36Sen. Whitehouse: Yes, sir.
▶ 0:34:37Chair Crapo: With regard to the nominee and application that was made that he has failed to pay his taxes, that is simply false. The issue is one on which the nominee has filed his taxes in compliance with standard existing tax law.
▶ 0:34:55Chair Crapo: The internal revenue service, not just with regard to this nominee but with regard to many, many taxpayers, is seeking to change its interpretation of the law at issue. If the internal revenue services' change of that interpretation is accepted, he would owe taxes, as with many other people. This issue is in court.
▶ 0:35:23Chair Crapo: Not in a case that he has brought, but in a case another taxpayer has brought against the irs trying to change the rules. The nominee, Mr. bessent, has stated that he has fully complied with traditional tax law and is prepared, if the irs position prevails in court and the rules change, to pay the tax that is due.
▶ 0:35:53Chair Crapo: He has even set aside a reserve fund to do so. He has done nothing wrong, except follow traditional tax law, and has stated that if the internal revenue service does prevail in his litigation to change the interpretation of how standard practice has proceeded in the past, then he will comply with that new interpretation. I think that it is eminently fair.
▶ 0:36:22Sen. Wyden: If my colleague would yield briefly, because we have other things to talk about, to be a clear, because tax policy is dense mumbo-jumbo, if Mr. bessent is confirmed tomorrow, he will go to his office the next day and will be serving in a way that is not compliant with treasury and the irs position on this issue of medicare taxes.
▶ 0:36:53Sen. Wyden: That is not a question of appeals and all the rest. That is a question of what will happen the day after he takes his seat. That is what is so troubling. On that day, there will be a double standard all over america. People who pay their medicare taxes on time will, in effect, say the person who is in charge of this at treasury is not in compliance with the policy of two bodies of the irs and treasury.
▶ 0:37:20Chair Crapo: I will give you this. He will be the secretary of treasury if he is confirmed by the senate. The bottom line is, he has made it very clear that he will comply if the irs position is what is determined by the court of law to be the new position of tax policy. He will comply with it. Is there anything further on the nomination discussion today? All right.
▶ 0:37:48Chair Crapo: With that, the committee will be in recess. [gavel falls]