Senate Democrats held up the nomination of financial regulators, taking exception to two Securities and Exchange Commission nominees’ opinions about corporate disclosure of political spending.
Senate Banking Committee members Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), Jeff Merkley and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said Thursday they wouldn’t support Lisa Fairfax and Hester Maria Peirce—the former is a Democrat, the latter is a Republican.
The move caused committee chair Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) to hold off on attempting to advance the SEC nominations, which were paired “en bloc” with three others: Matthew Jepson, Jay Lerner, and Amias Gerety. The trio are, respectively, President Obama’s choices to be next Director of the US Mint, next Inspector General of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and an Assistant Treasury Secretary nomination.
“I’m not sure it will work en bloc, we might just need a recorded vote,” Shelby said. He then spoke to a staffer and said the committee would “postpone the vote,” as committees often do when marking up legislation or executive nominees.
At the nomination hearings for the SEC picks, Sens. Schumer and Menendez had asked Fairfax and Peirce to detail their opinions about a proposal, widely-supported by Democrats, to make publicly-traded companies disclose political spending. They reported on Thursday being completely dissatisfied with their responses.
“It would introduce a small but undeniably important degree of accountability and sunlight into a system that’s broke,” Schumer said. “When I asked both SEC nominees about their position, they demurred. I asked them to think about it and give me an answer in writing. The answer in writing was, frankly, gobbledygook.”
“It was: ‘Maybe yes, maybe no. I have to look at both sides,’” Schumer added, mocking their response. “I think that’s false equivalency.”
Lawmakers, including Merkley, brought up the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision, which allowed unlimited undisclosed political spending.
“Since then, corporate political spending has gone unchecked and our democracy has been flooded by dark money from undisclosed sources,” Merkley said. “It’s time to change that.”
He also noted and lamented that SEC Chair Mary Jo White put a political spending disclosure proposal on the rule-making agenda, but withdrew it.
“If you invest your money, you have the right to know how and when that company is spending your money to influence the outcome of the election,” Merkley added. “Anything else is stolen speech and incompatible with the freedom of speech in our Constitution.”
Warren also singled out Peirce for criticism “based on her stated views on Dodd-Frank.” A few years ago, for example, Peirce wrote a listicle called “10 Ways Dodd-Frank Will Hurt the Economy in 2013.” Warren said it would be “dangerous” to allow a person with those opinions to execute rules mandated by financial reform.
“We saw what happened the last time we deregulated the industry,” she said. “The price tag was enormous: $14 trillion according to the Dallas Fed. We cannot go back there. Not now. Not ever.”
