LEFTY PICK ‘FLEES’

Banking-nom exit

Saule Omarova, President Biden’s controversial pick to be comptroller of the currency, withdrew her nomination Tuesday amid both Republican and Democratic backlash over her academic writings, which include advocating for the end of banking “as we know it.”

During her confirmation hearing in the Senate Banking Committee last month, lawmakers pointed to the Soviet-born and -raised Omarova’s academic papers proposing a shift away from consumer banking, by moving Americans’ finances from private banks to the Federal Reserve.

“My concern with Professor Omarova [inset] is her long history of promoting ideas that she herself describes as ‘radical,’ ” Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) said of the Cornell University law professor during the hearing.

“I agree that they are radical. But I’d also describe them as socialist.”

She defended her writings as a part of a larger debate, arguing it was not what she planned to implement in the Treasury position.

In her letter taking her name out of consideration, Omarova said it was “no longer tenable” for her to continue with the process.

“It was a great honor and a true privilege to be nominated by President Biden to lead the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency overseeing the US national banking system,” she wrote.

“I deeply value President Biden’s trust in my abilities and remain firmly committed to the Administration’s vision of a prosperous, inclusive, and just future for our country. At this point in the process, however, it is no longer tenable for me to continue as a Presidential nominee.”

While no Democrats openly spoke out against the nominee, centrist Democrat Sens. Jon Tester (Mont.), Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.) and Mark Warner (Va.) voiced reservations behind the scenes, making her chances of confirmation unlikely.

The three Democratic members of the committee told Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), the panel’s chairman, that they opposed Omarova’s nomination, Axios reported.

Omarova, who was born in Kazakhstan in the former Soviet Union and moved to the US in 1991 to pursue her Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin, has also slammed the culture on Wall Street as a “quintessential a--hole industry,” and praised the former Soviet Union’s lack of a gender pay gap.

In a confirmation hearing last week before the committee, Republicans grilled Omarova and painted her as a radical socialist.

“I don’t know whether to call you professor or comrade,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) snarked at one point.

“I’m not a communist,” Omarova insisted.

“I do not subscribe to that ideology. I could not choose where I was born.”