On The Money: Moore withdraws from Fed consideration | Decries ‘unrelenting attacks’ | GOP senator tells White House to ‘do some research’ before next pick

Happy Thursday and welcome back to On The Money, where we’ve been craving fried chicken all day. I’m Sylvan Lane, and here’s your nightly guide to everything affecting your bills, bank account and bottom line.

 

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THE BIG DEAL–No Moore Hope: Trump says Stephen Moore withdrew from Fed running: President Trump said Thursday that conservative commentator Stephen Moore has decided to withdraw from consideration for the Federal Reserve Board amid staunch opposition from Senate Republicans.

“Steve Moore, a great pro-growth economist and a truly fine person, has decided to withdraw from the Fed process,” Trump tweeted.

Trump praised Moore for having “won the battle of ideas including Tax Cuts and deregulation” and said he asked him “to work with me toward future economic growth in our Country.”

The announcement came just hours after Moore said the White House was still “all in” on his potential nomination.

Moore told Trump in a Thursday letter “the unrelenting attacks on my character have become untenable for me and my family and three more months of this would be too hard on us.”

“I will continue to be a loud economic voice advocating for your policies, which will keep us on a prosperous path of 3 to 4 percent growth with rising wages and low inflation for as far as the eye can see,” Moore wrote. “I am always at your disposal.” The Hill’s Jordan Fabian and I fill you in here.

 

How we got here: Trump announced on March 22 that he would nominate Moore to the Fed, calling him “a very respected Economist” and an “outstanding choice.” But Moore was fiercely criticized for his intense partisanship, harsh rebukes of the current Fed regime and what detractors considered dubious and inconsistent economic analyses.

Moore, a conservative economist and former Trump campaign adviser, faced increasing backlash from Senate Republicans over a track record of controversial commentary.

• Most of the focus was on columns in which Moore disparaged women, including one he wrote that said women should not be involved in sports.
• “Here’s the rule change I propose: No more women refs, no women announcers, no women beer venders, no women anything,” he wrote in the 2002 piece for National Review.
• Moore has also taken heat for arguing that a wife earning more than her husband could be “disruptive” to a family and that “the male needs to be the breadwinner of the family.”

 

Almost impossible odds: Several GOP senators raised doubts about Moore’s political viability this week and said he would likely fail to be confirmed.

• Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), the Senate GOP whip, said Thursday he did not know if Moore could win over enough Republicans to overcome “challenges and obstacles” to his confirmation.

• Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a close Trump ally, called Moore’s potential nomination “problematic” and said “it would be tough” to get him confirmed.

• And Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), a member of Senate Republican leadership, said Tuesday she would not support Moore due in part to his “ridiculous” commentary and urged the White House to pull his nomination.

 

Moore decries “unrelenting attacks” Moore told Trump on Thursday that he is withdrawing from consideration for a Federal Reserve nomination due to the “unrelenting attacks” from his critics.

Moore told the president in a letter that he and his family could not handle the mounting criticism over his nomination, much of which centered around Moore’s resurfaced past writings.

“I am respectfully asking that you withdraw my name from consideration,” Moore, a conservative commentator and former Trump campaign adviser, wrote to the president. “The unrelenting attacks on my character have become untenable for me and my family and 3 more months of this would be too hard on us.”

 

Republicans exhale, tell White House to “do some research”: Senate Republicans breathed a sigh of relief Thursday over Moore withdrawing and urged the Trump administration to do a better job vetting potential nominations.

The decision lets Republican senators avoid what was shaping up to be a showdown with Trump after several female senators, members of GOP leadership and traditional Trump allies began publicly airing their doubts about Moore this week. Here’s what they told Jordain Carney.

• “The bottom line is they need to vet all of that even before they forward a name or float a name out there. … Please do some research,” said Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), a member of Senate GOP leadership who opposed Moore.

• Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) — a close ally of Trump’s who previously warned it would be “tough” to get Moore through the Senate — said that “I think that was probably a wise decision.”

• “Yeah, vet better,” he added, asked if there was a takeaway from the White House on vetting.

• “I think it’s probably better to do a little more in-depth understanding of whether somebody can be confirmed or not before you say who you’re thinking about nominating,” said Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), a member of GOP leadership.

• Going forward, Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.)  said he hoped the administration considered “well-qualified, well-respected and non-controversial people because the Fed is an important place.”

 

What comes next: It’s hard to say. This is Trump’s fourth failed Fed nominee, and the second blocked attempt to get a loyalist onto the central bank’s board. Plus, five of the seven Fed board seats are occupied, mostly with establishment-friendly Republicans. There’s no particular pressure from any corner of Washington to fill those last two seats, so it’s possible Trump holds off on future nominations for a while.

 

LEADING THE DAY

CBO projects deficits will add up to $12.7 trillion through 2029: The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) on Thursday projected that federal government deficits will add up to $12.7 trillion from 2019 through 2029.

The nonpartisan CBO estimated that the 2019 deficit would reach $896 billion and exceed $1 trillion annually starting in 2022.

The estimate for this year’s deficit was $1 billion lower than the CBO’s previous estimate, and the cumulative deficit from 2020 to 2029 is now expected to be about 2 percent smaller than previously projected.

The main reason for the 2 percent decline was a reduction in estimated mandatory spending and net interest payments, according to the CBO, which said its economic forecasts remain the same and that it had not fully updated its revenue projections. Niv Elis breaks it down.

 

Lawmakers pressed to fix tax law glitch: Retailers and restaurants are stepping up their push for Congress to fix a provision in President Trump’s tax law that they say is hurting their businesses.

Because of an apparent drafting error in the law, stores and restaurants have to write off the costs of their renovations over 39 years, instead of being able to write off the full costs immediately as Congress intended. Stakeholders say the error has caused some businesses to hold off on making improvements to their stores’ interiors.

Lawmakers in the House and Senate have introduced bipartisan legislation to fix the so-called retail glitch, but action on making corrections to the 2017 tax law doesn’t appear to be imminent. Business groups say they want to increase the pressure on lawmakers to act quickly.

“We think we’re doing everything to ramp up the pressure on Congress to get this done,” said Dave Koenig, vice president for tax at the Retail Industry Leaders Association. The Hill’s Naomi Jagoda explains what went wrong here.

 

GOOD TO KNOW

• A bipartisan group of House members on Thursday introduced legislation to fix an issue where the GOP tax law has been negatively affecting the children of deceased military members.

• President Trump on Wednesday met with the CEO of Foxconn, the major manufacturer of Apple’s iPhones, as the company wavers on its pledge to build a large factory in Wisconsin.

• Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) on Thursday asked special counsel Robert Mueller whether his team reviewed President Trump’s taxes as part of their investigation into Russian election interference, something Trump has said he assumes Muller’s team studied.

• President Trump’s approval rating on the economy has hit a new high, according to a CNN poll released on Thursday. A majority of respondents — 56 percent — said they approve of Trump’s handling of the economy, compared with 41 percent who disapproved.

• Top House Republicans say they want public-private partnerships to stay on the table as an option for financing a sweeping infrastructure overhaul, despite criticisms from President Trump.

• ProPublica: “Despite signing a deal with the IRS that pledged they would help tens of millions of Americans file taxes for free, tax software giants Intuit, the maker of TurboTax, and H&R Block instead deliberately hid the free option and actively steered customers into paid products, according to an internal document and five current and former employees of the companies.”

 

ODDS AND ENDS

• Facebook announced Thursday that it has permanently banned a host of prominent figures it described as “dangerous” from its platform, including right-wing commentator and former Breitbart News editor Milo Yiannopoulos, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.

• Evan Kraft, the economist in residence for the Economics Department at American University, writes an op-ed on how “Despite Trump’s needling, the Fed stands its ground.”