Fed’s Powell responds to White House on Fed headquarters renovation
(Reuters) -Federal Reserve President Jerome Powell responded to the requests of information about the cost -out for a renewal project of a Trump administration official’s central bank on the Washington General Directorate Campus on the Washington General Directorate Campus and said it contains a series of safety raising and dangerous material inferences.
Powell, management and budget director Russell Vought’a letter to the letter, “the Board’s public website explained on the public website, as we fulfill the duties given by the American people on behalf of the American people, we take the responsibility of being good managers.” He continued: “In 2017, we took great care to ensure that the project was first approved by the Board.”
He stated that the budget of the project was subject to annual approval by the FED Board and that the FED’s general inspector had full access to information about costs and other details.
Last week, Vought accused Powell of controlling the revision of the buildings “flashy” and costly, and asked Powell to answer a series of questions about the project that emerged as the latest attack line by Trump White House.
“Dear Mr. Vought,” Powell said in his letter, “the removal of asbestos of both buildings and the fact that the antique systems such as lead containment, electrical, installation, heating, ventilation and accommodation needed important structural repairs and other updates to make safe, healthy and effective working places.
The project did not contain new marble when it was necessary to have special elevators or VIP dining rooms or the original or the historical protection guidelines and to remedy the concerns expressed by external review agencies. “He said.
Trump, who wanted Powell to go from the Fed because he did not make interest rate deductions, brought up his renewal project as a possible new reason for the FED chief and claimed that he could be fraud without providing evidence. Vought said that management officials are trying to visit the site to examine it.
“For a big, beautiful mansion for the federal president,” he said in the White House Press Briefing on Thursday, the White House spokesman Karoline spokesman. “Completely unnecessary. Overpriced and I think the administration managed by the president is looking at it.”
Leavitt was asked whether the review was found any mistake, and he will trigger the President to expel Powell. “Look, this is a hypothetical question. We’ll see where he’s going, Lev Leavitt said.
Powell’s letter was largely repeated that the members of the Senate Banking Committee were in the beginning of this week that the FED’s detailed explanations against the project’s claims that made Vought amending the project had violated the rules determined by the National Capital Planning Commission and required the Commission to examine the Commission.
The FED said, NCPC worked closely and in cooperation, Pow Powell and the Fed said that the changes made by the FED were not important and therefore did not meet NCPC’s own guidance to need additional examination.
(Dan Burns and Howard Schneider, Ann Saphir, David Morgan, Steve Holland; Chris Reese and Diane Craft)
