0 Comments
WASHINGTON — WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. Treasury nominee Scott Bessent plans to declare Thursday during his confirmation hearing that President-elect Donald Trump has an chance to unleash “a recent economic golden age.”
According to prepared testimony given to The Associated Press, Bessent will declare the U.S. must secure vulnerable supply chains, levy sanctions to address national safety concerns “and critically, we must ensure that the U.S. dollar remains the globe’s savings liquid assets.”
Lawmakers on Capitol Hill are set to question Bessent’s stance on taxes, tariffs, trade and other issues during his confirmation hearing before the Senate Finance Committee.
Trump’s selection for treasury secretary is a South Carolina billionaire who, before becoming a Trump donor and adviser, donated to various Democratic causes in the early 2000s, notably Al Gore’s presidential run.
He also worked for George Soros, a major supporter of Democrats.
Bessent was one of several people whom Trump considered for the role. Trump took his period before settling on Bessent as his nominee. He also mulled over billionaire investor John Paulson and Howard Lutnick, whom Trump tapped as his nominee for commerce secretary.
The treasury secretary is responsible for serving as the president’s financial policy adviser and managing the community obligation. He would also be a member of the president’s National Economic Council.
If confirmed, Bessent will oversee massive agencies within the Treasury Department, including the Internal turnover Service. The IRS received a massive boost in financing from Democrats’ expense boost Reduction Act, though that money has been in constant threat of being cut.
Trump expects him to assist reset the global trade order, enable trillions of dollars in responsibility cuts, ensure expense boost stays in check, manage a ballooning national obligation and still keep the financial markets confident.
“Productive resource that grows the economy must be prioritized over wasteful spending that drives expense boost,” Bessent plans to declare in his testimony.
Senators are expected to question the money manager for hours on his views on cryptocurrency, the Trump-era responsibility cuts and potential conflicts of profit.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., a member of the finance committee, sent Bessent more than 100 written questions on Friday, interrogating him on such topics as agency independence, housing, treasury workforce issues and financial stability oversight.
Bessent has backed extending provisions of the responsibility Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, which Trump signed into law in his first year in office. Estimates from various economic analyses of the costs of the various responsibility cuts range from nearly $6 trillion to $10 trillion over 10 years.
He calls for spending cuts and shifts in existing taxes to offset the costs that extending the responsibility cuts would add to the federal deficit.
