Senate panel approves Trump’s pick of Powell as new Fed chairman

WASHINGTON — The Senate banking committee on Tuesday approved President Donald Trump’s selection of Jerome Powell to be the next chairman of the Federal Reserve.

The committee vote was 22-1 with all Republicans and every Democrat except Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., supporting the nomination.

The committee vote indicated Powell will have no trouble winning approval from the full Senate. That vote has not yet been scheduled.

Warren said she could not support Powell because of her concerns that he would join in efforts by the Trump administration to unravel the Dodd-Frank Act passed in 2010 to strengthen regulation of the nation’s banking sector.

“Governor Powell has made clear repeatedly that he believes the biggest problem in our financial rules is that they are too demanding,” Warren said before Tuesday’s vote. “An army of bank lobbyists and executives have managed to convince Governor Powell that financial rules are strangling the banks and need to be rolled back. There is no evidence to support this claim.”

Powell, who has been a member of the Fed’s board of governors since 2012, was tapped for the chairman’s job after Trump decided against nominating Fed Chair Janet Yellen for a second term. Trump said he wanted to put his own stamp on the central bank.

The White House announced last week that Trump would nominate Marvin Goodfriend, an economics professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, to one of three vacant seats on the central bank.