By Mark S. Nelson, J.D.
President Trump has nominated Hester Peirce to be an SEC commissioner. This will be the second time Peirce has received a presidential nod to join the Commission, the first having been under the Obama administration. Trump formally sent Peirce’s nomination to the Senate today, along with numerous others, including additional judicial nominees. Trump had previously announced his plans to nominate Peirce.
This past April, Peirce, now director of the Financial Markets Working Group within the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, testified before the House Financial Services Committee that the Dodd-Frank Act should be subjected to a second look, especially regarding the SEC’s rulemaking process, appropriations for financial regulators, the too-big-to fail problem, and capital markets.
Peirce’s testimony concerned what was then a discussion draft of the Financial CHOICE Act of 2017 (H.R. 10), which would repeal key parts of Dodd-Frank and limit SEC rulemaking. The Congressional Budget Office initially said the CHOICE Act could save $24.1 billion while costing $1.8 billion to implement, but a revised report analyzing the manager’s amendments to the bill concluded savings may total $33.6 billion and cost $11.6 billion to implement. The CHOICE Act passed the House in June.