Dive Brief:

• The nomination for Michael Barr, President Joe Biden’s pick to serve as the Federal Reserve’s vice chair for supervision, advanced to the full Senate on Wednesday by a 17-7 vote from members of the chamber’s banking committee.
• All 12 Democrats on the panel, and five Republicans — Sens. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania; Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming; Tim Scott of South Carolina; Mike Rounds of South Dakota; and Jerry Moran of Kansas — backed Barr. 
• The Senate has not yet set a date for Barr’s confirmation vote. If confirmed, he will be the last of Biden’s five Fed nominees to take his seat. It would also mark the first time in almost a decade that the Fed’s seven-member board of governors has been fully staffed, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Dive Insight:

In terms of bipartisan support, Barr ranked third among Biden’s five Fed nominees — short of the unanimous support received by Fed Gov. Philip Jefferson or the 23 votes Chairman Jerome Powell garnered but surpassing Vice Chair Lael Brainard’s 16-8 margin, or the 12-12 party-line split seen for Fed Gov. Lisa Cook.

“While I disagree with Professor Barr on a number of policy issues, he has pledged to fight the record high inflation that’s hurting American families,” Toomey said in a statement Wednesday. “He has also publicly acknowledged that the Fed does not have the authority to — nor should it — allocate credit or use its regulatory powers to accelerate the transition to a lower carbon economy.”

That last point may have served as a nod to lawmakers’ bitter divide over Biden’s previous pick for the Fed’s vice chair of supervision role, Sarah Bloom Raskin. 

Toomey, the Senate Banking Committee’s ranking member, called out Raskin over a 2020 op-ed she wrote in The New York Times, in which she criticized the Fed for allowing oil, gas and coal companies to receive government-backed emergency-lending COVID relief. Raskin withdrew her nomination in March after Sen. Joe Manchin, D-WV, announced he would not support her over energy policy concerns.

Toomey noted Wednesday that Barr, in a letter to him this week, committed to ensuring the Fed Board of Governors and its reserve banks would not engage in political activities, including political lobbying and would respond promptly to congressional requests for information.

Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-OH, the panel’s chair, gave Barr a vote of confidence, too — even if he didn’t attend the tally in person.

“We need a Vice Chair for Supervision who will ensure banks have the capital to weather the next financial storm, whatever the risk or cause,” Brown said. “Michael Barr is an exceptional nominee who has the talent and experience to protect our economy from those risks.”

The post Barr would occupy has been vacant since October, when Gov. Randal Quarles’ term expired without a successor in place. 

At Wednesday’s session, the Senate Banking Committee also voted to support two nominees to serve as commissioners at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC): Republican Mark Uyeda and Democrat Jaime Lizárraga.