Dems press Republican to move Obama nominees

Democrats on the Senate Banking Committee are pushing Chairman Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) to act on President Obama’s nominations.

Each of the panel’s 10 Democrats signed a letter circulated by Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), the panel’s ranking member, urging Shelby to move the nominations.

{mosads}“The Committee has not held a single nomination hearing; not one nomination has come before the committee in executive session; and no nominees have been discharged for the Senate’s consideration,” the Democrats wrote in the letter, obtained by The Hill.

The Banking Committee has received 11 nominations including for positions on the board of the Export-Import Bank, Federal Reserve Board, Department of Treasury and U.S. Mint.

A representative for Shelby could not immediately be reached for comment.

According to the letter, the Banking panel is the only committee in the Senate that has yet this year to hold a hearing on nominees.

That’s compared to three nomination hearings by August 2007, when President George W. Bush was in office and Democrats held the Senate, the letter said. The Senate had confirmed more than a dozen nominees by that point in that Congress, it said.

The full list of pending nominations for the Banking panel include Allan Landon to be a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System; Therese McMillan to be federal transit administrator; Jay Neal Lerner to be inspector general at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation; John E. Mendez to be a director at the Securities Investor Protection Corporation; Leslie E. Bains to be a director at the Securities Investor Protection Corporation; Adewale Adeyemo to be an assistant secretary of the Treasury; Amias Moore Gerety to be an assistant secretary of the Treasury; Adam Szubin to be undersecretary for terrorism and financial crimes; Patricia M. Loui-Schmicker to be a member of the board of directors of the Export-Import Bank; Kathryn Dominguez to be a member of the Federal Reserve Board; and Matthew Rhett Jeppson to be the director of the U.S. Mint.

Szbuin is scheduled for a nomination hearing on Sept. 10, the committee announced earlier this week. There are no other nomination hearings currently scheduled.