Senate Confirms Billionaire Hedge Fund Manager Bessent as Treasury Secretary

Government watchdog groups on Monday responded critically to the U.S. Senate's bipartisan confirmation of Republican President Donald Trump's nominee for treasury secretary, billionaire hedge fund manager Scott Bessent.

"Donald Trump spent months promising American workers they'd have no greater friend and advocate than him. But his first order of business as president-elect was to nominate a stack of corporate lobbyists, billionaire donors, and Wall Street insiders like Scott Bessent to carry out a wealthy-first, workers-last agenda," said Accountable.US executive director Tony Carrk in a statement after the 68-29 vote.

"Another giant Trump tax giveaway to price gouging corporations won't lift up working people, but it will put Social Security and Medicare at risk," Carrk continued. "A national Trump sales tax won't be much help to working families when it results in thousands of dollars in extra costs every year. Bessent is so enthusiastic about the Trump trickle-down economic plans because it keeps the system rigged in favor of wealthy insiders like him, while everyday Americans pay the price."

Recalling congressional Republicans' and Trump's massive tax cuts for the rich during his first term, Groundwork Collaborative executive director Lindsay Owens declared Monday that "a billionaire hedge fund manager who doesn't pay his own taxes is now Trump's right-hand man for another massive tax break for the ultrawealthy. The president is filling his Cabinet with one goal in mind: more tax giveaways for the wealthy and corporations."

Anne Perrault, senior finance policy counsel with Public Citizen, said in a Monday statement that "Scott Bessent is an oligarch who spent a career serving rich clients. He will need to make a hard pivot toward understanding that sound policy must serve average Americans, including by saving banks and achieving a fair tax system."

"Under Bessent, the Treasury Department appears poised to attend only to the largest lenders and investors," Perrault warned. "This is in contrast to the past four years, where the department took necessary, though insufficient, steps to address climate change as a 'unique, existential risk for the planet that will affect every aspect of our lives and the lives of our children' and, in turn, pose a 'tremendous risk to our country's financial stability.' By ignoring climate change as a financial risk, Trump's Treasury Department under Bessent, is on a path that could devastate hard-working families."

Ahead of the vote, a coalition of other watchdogs on Monday launched a "No Corporate Cabinet" website raising the alarm about "persons of interest" selected to serve in the second Trump administration, including Bessent. The site describes him as "a former investor for billionaire George Soros" who "made a name for himself by bringing down the British economy in the 'Black Wednesday' scandal of the 1990s," and pointed to investments in fossil fuel companies along with Meta, Monsanto, and Palantir.

During his confirmation hearing earlier this month, Bessent said that he did not believe the federal minimum wage of just $7.25 an hour should be raised and promoted a "3-3-3" agenda that analysts at the Center for American Progress (CAP) warned "requires brutal cuts to health and nutrition and higher costs for families at the grocery store."

After the Senate's Monday vote, Bessent said on social media that "as treasury secretary, I'm committed to eliminating income taxes, replacing them with a fair consumption tax, and adopting a gold-backed currency. We'll erase debt, restore financial privacy, and unlock new technologies for a prosperous future. The golden age starts now."

Progressives have argued against a so-called "fair consumption tax," or a national sales tax, because of its impacts—which CAP analysts explained in 2023, in response to Rep. Earl "Buddy" Carter's (R-Ga.) Fair Tax Act, which he reintroduced earlier this month.

"By shifting the foundation of the federal tax system from income to consumption, the Fair Tax Act would cut taxes for the wealthy while increasing taxes paid by low- and middle-income retirees who live off of Social Security and savings, as well as families who would be forced to pay more taxes on everyday goods and services," the CAP experts wrote. "Meanwhile, high-income families who spend less of their income on consumption and who have sufficient earnings to save a substantial fraction of their income would pay a smaller share of their income in tax."

Politico reported that "Bessent on Monday garnered significantly more Democratic support than Trump's first Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin. The Senate confirmed Mnuchin in 2017 on a 53-47 vote, in which then-Sen. Joe Manchin was the only Democrat who backed him." Manchin later became an Independent, before leaving Congress at the end of the last session.

Bessent is the fifth Cabinet member to be confirmed by the Senate since Trump took office a week ago. The closest vote was on the Pentagon chief, Pete Hegseth; Vice President JD Vance on Friday had to break a tie after Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine), Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) joined Democrats in opposing him.