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A Phil Hall Op-Ed: Yesterday, I was listening to a morning television show that featured an interview with Eric Teetsel, the CEO of the Center for American Renewal, a conservative advocacy group that promotes itself as being “created to confront the woke and weaponized agenda of the ruling class and replace it with one that puts God, country, and community at the center of the policy debate in Washington.” The subject of the interview related to the administration’s attacks on the Federal Reserve and Teetsel was asked why Americans should care about this issue.

“Americans care about the Constitution, plain and simple” Teetsel replied. “There’s no fourth branch of government. The Treasury Secretary, the Fed, they all work for president as part of the Executive Branch. They are ultimately responsible to him.”

Teetsel added, “It is the president’s decision what the Fed should do and who should operate it on a day-to-day basis because they operate under his authority.”

I was shocked at the ignorance on display in Teetsel’s answer, but perhaps I shouldn’t have been when you realize that his organization was founded in 2021 by Russ Vought, who served as director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) during the first Trump administration and is now in the same position with Trump’s second go-round. Vought has been leading the bizarre and increasingly deranged campaign of declaring that Fed Chairman Jerome Powell has singlehandedly turned the renovations at the central bank’s Washington headquarters into an overpriced luxury boondoggle that Vought has compared to the Palace of Versailles.

Vought, of course, is using this project to create a scandal that will give President Trump the ability to fire Powell for cause – Trump is frustrated that the Fed has not cut rates since December, but the Supreme Court has already made it clear that a president does not have the constitutional ability to fire a Fed chairman at will.

In order to create a cause that would justify Trump’s firing of Powell, Vought and other members of the Trump team – including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner, Deputy Chief of Staff James Blair, and especially Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte – have gone full-throttle in trying to whip up a scandal where Powell has not only allowed renovation costs to get out of control, but that he also lied to Congress about it. Vought has demanded access to the renovation site and even sent a pompous public letter to Powell demanding answers on why he allegedly turned the renovation into a luxury destination.

As with Teetsel, Vought appears ignorant to the fact that the Fed is not part of the Executive Branch of government and he had no authority to demand any information from Powell. While the president appoints the Fed chairman and the members of the central bank’s board of governors, there is no official connection between the Executive Branch and this independent government agency. Actually, the Fed is directly accountable to the Congress, although it is not funded by congressional appropriations.

Furthermore, the Fed has been upfront an honest in detailing the renovations, which involve two historic buildings constructed in the 1930s and have never been modernized. The renovation hit several difficulties that drove up the costs, including environmental remediation involving asbestos and contaminated soil plus differences between the original estimates and the actual costs of labor and equipment. Clearly, Trump and Pulte would be able to appreciate that considering their real estate and construction backgrounds.

In fact, Powell’s Fed has been open with the public on this matter, detailing its work on its website. Compare that level of honesty to how the Trump team is handling the Jeffrey Epstein files.

Admittedly, the separation between the White House and the Fed has blurred at times, most notably the Richard Nixon-Arthur Burns relation in the 1970s and, yes, with the very generous 50-basis-point rate cut ahead of the 2024 election that appeared to be a gift to the Harris-Walz campaign. And, perhaps, that is the ultimate irony in this dumb comedy. If Trump wanted to fire Powell, he could easily cite the incompetent aspects of the chairman’s leadership as cause for concern – remember when Powell insisted inflation was transitory while Bidenomics drove the economy into a ditch?

A delegation from the White House is scheduled to tour the Fed renovation site on Thursday. I hope that independent news cameras come along for the tour – considering the axe-grinding agenda that Vought and his team have, it would be helpful for objective outsiders to provide an honest view of what’s taking place.

Phil Hall is editor of Weekly Real Estate News. He can be reached at [email protected].

Photo: Part of the asbestos remediation in the Federal Reserve headquarters, courtesy of the agency