Sen. Amy Klobuchar, one of the longest-serving Democrats eligible to replace Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) on the Finance Committee, is not interested in winning a seat on the committee, according to a source with knowledge of her thinking.
Menendez told New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy and fellow senators on Tuesday he would resign from the Senate next month following his conviction on bribery charges, freeing up a coveted seat on the tax committee from which he faced a possible vote for expulsion.
A source close to the Minnesota Democrat, who ran for the party’s presidential nomination during the 2020 campaign, said she has no interest in making changes to her committees at this time.
She currently serves as chair of the Senate Rules and Administration Committee and is the second-ranking Democrat on the Commerce Committee and the third-ranking Democrat on the Agriculture and Judiciary committees.
Klobuchar, who chairs the Judiciary Committee’s antitrust subcommittee, may be in prime position to replace retiring Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) as the top Democrat on agriculture. She trails only Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, on the committee and is already the top Senate banking Democrat if she survives a tough November election.
With Klobuchar wanting to stay in her position, attention is turning to younger Democrats such as Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Tina Smith of Minnesota as possible candidates to replace Menendez.
Senate Democrats place a premium on seniority when determining committee assignments. Democrats can only sit on one of the three most coveted committees: Appropriations, Armed Services, and Finance. The party also limits members of those committees to only one senator per state, although exemptions to both rules are possible.
These criteria leave relatively few Senate Democrats eligible to replace Menendez as Treasury Secretary without a waiver.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is qualified and outranks both Booker and Smith, but has declined the opportunity to serve on the Finance Committee in recent years. Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Massachusetts) also has seniority over them, but would need a waiver to serve on the committee because Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) is already a member.
Among the candidates to replace Menendez, Booker would keep New Jersey on the Finance Committee, giving him influence over some of the most far-reaching policy issues a lawmaker can have an involvement in, including taxes, trade, health care and Social Security.
After news of Menendez’s resignation broke on Tuesday, Mr. Booker wasn’t ready to make his wishes known — at least not until he had discussed the matter with Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer of New York. “I’m not going to comment on that. I haven’t even spoken to Chuck Schumer yet,” Mr. Booker said.
But now that Menendez’s resignation is confirmed, the debate is likely to intensify.
Meanwhile, progressive advocates have begun weighing in on the issue, urging Senate Democrats to keep their own members in the seat. They argue the stakes are high given the need to address provisions of the 2017 tax law that are set to expire next year.
Lindsay Owens, executive director of the Groundwork Collaborative, said in a statement that Menendez’s successor as finance secretary should promise to “vote against every penny of additional tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations.”
“The Senate Finance Committee is filled with Wall Street defenders. The American people need their own fighters,” added Morris Pearl, president of Patriotic Millionaires.
According to data compiled by Open Secrets, major donors to Booker’s campaign include many from the financial services industry, as well as law firms, major technology companies, the Walt Disney Co. and his alma mater, Stanford University. Booker’s top 20 lifetime donors include employees of Goldman Sachs, Apollo Global Management, JPMorgan Chase, Henry Crown and Morgan Stanley.
While Booker supports lifting the $10,000 cap on state and local tax deductions that benefit wealthy families, he also supports expanding tax credits for the working poor and low-income families with children. He also opposed the 2017 tax cuts on high-income families, and in the 2020 presidential election, he supported eliminating the tax break on investment income by raising taxes on capital gains and dividends.