Scott Bessent struggles under questioning by New York Rep. Ritchie Torres during explosive House hearing

U.S. Rep. Ritchie Torres came to Wednesday’s House Financial Services Committee hearing not to trade pleasantries with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. He came with a ledger, receipts, and a constitutional question the Trump administration has tried to keep safely abstract. What followed was the kind of cross-examination that has become Torres’s signature: data-forward, tightly paced, and indifferent to evasions. Both Torres and Bessent are out gay men who have, in different ways, been treated as symbols of LGBTQ+ representation in federal power.

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Torres, a New York Democrat, asked whether a president can remove Federal Reserve officials over policy disagreements, a question now before the U.S. Supreme Court in a case stemming from President Donald Trump’s attempt to remove Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook. The case has forced the justices to weigh how far presidential removal power extends into independent agencies traditionally shielded from at-will firing. The dispute goes to the heart of the Fed’s independence and the administration’s embrace of a more expansive view of executive authority. Bessent demurred. “I am not a lawyer, and I don’t have an opinion,” he said, before adding that “we’ll have to see what the Supreme Court says.”

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Pressed on the administration’s own position, he hedged again, saying there are “varying opinions in the administration,” and, when asked how he classifies the Fed, replied, “I consider [it] an independent agency,” only to retreat once more: “Again, we’ll have to see.”

Torres then cited reporting that undercut the Trump administration’s claims of a manufacturing revival and asked for a simple figure: how many factory jobs have been lost since April 2025. Bessent answered, “I believe it’s about 67,000.” Torres corrected him to roughly 70,000 and moved on.

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Next, Torres walked Bessent through the Purchasing Managers’ Index, the blunt instrument that tells you whether manufacturing is expanding or contracting. Since the administration’s so-called “Liberation Day” tariffs last April, Torres said, the PMI had been below 50 — contraction — for nine consecutive months, with only one recent month above that line. Bessent tried to seize on the present tense. “We just had the biggest increase in over a decade, and we are well above 50 now,” he said. Torres cut back in with the broader frame: “So the score is nine to one: nine months of manufacturing contraction versus one month of expansion.”

Bessent attempted to pivot again, citing “long and variable lead times in manufacturing.” Torres cut him off and changed the subject to the philosophy of tariffs, and to the administration’s habit of imposing them on goods the United States does not and cannot make at scale. When Bessent defended the policy as leverage — “That would be the definition of foolish in a negotiation,” he said when asked to rule out such tariffs — Torres answered that a tariff on bananas does not produce domestic bananas; it only raises prices. “We have to make bananas great again,” he said sarcastically, as Bessent tried to finish his thought.

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After the hearing, Torres expanded on his frustration with Bessent regarding what he heard. “All I got were non-answers from Bessent: ‘Not a lawyer’ on Fed firings, excuses for 70,000 lost jobs from his boss’s tariffs. The Secretary’s evasion isn’t a policy ploy— it’s a betrayal of working families in the Bronx and across America,” Torres told The Advocate through a spokesperson.

As the hearing unfolded, at one point Ranking Member Rep. Maxine Waters, a California Democrat, clashed sharply with the secretary over procedure and substance, turning to the committee chair and saying, “Can you shut him up?”

Watch Rep. Ritchie Torres question Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent below.

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