Senate Banking Committee plans vote on Fed nominees for March

The Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs plans to vote in March on nominees to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, after a scheduled vote did not happen Feb. 15.

"That's our intention when we get back in March," Chairman Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, said at a hearing, before testimony from members of the Council of Economic Advisers.

Ranking Member Patrick Toomey, R-Pa., said he has asked Brown to hold a vote on all the nominees except Sarah Bloom Raskin, but Brown said that would set a precedent in which a ranking member who dislikes a nominee's answers to questions and withholds a quorum can effectively choose which nominees receive votes.

No committee Republicans attended a scheduled vote on Federal Reserve nominees Feb. 15. As a result, no quorum was reached, which is needed to send the nominations to the Senate floor for a vote.

Sarah Bloom Raskin, President Joe Biden's nominee for vice chair for supervision, has faced criticism from Republicans related to her former board seat with The Reserve Trust Co., a financial technology company that was granted a Federal Reserve master account.

The other Fed nominees up for a vote were Chair Jerome Powell, who was renominated for his post and is chair pro tempore since his term expired; Fed Governor Lael Brainard, nominated for vice chair; and Lisa Cook and Philip Jefferson, both nominated as Fed governors.