During the hearing, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., attacked Peirce for her writings against Dodd-Frank.
“No one hires a watchdog who is not committed to enforcing the rules. The SEC has a lot of tools that can undermine Congressional mandate,” Warren said.
She and three other Democratic senators, New York’s Chuck Schumer, Oregon’s Jeff Merkley and New Jersey’s Robert Menendez, stressed their beliefs the SEC should enact a rule requiring companies to disclose their political contributions.
Warren and Mendez pointed out 1.2 million investors have told the SEC they want mandated political contribution disclosures—the most comments the agency has ever received on a specific issue.
Schumer threatened to vote against Peirce and Fairfax if they didn’t say if they favored or opposed the mandatory disclosures. Neither gave her position during the session, but Peirce did say it should not be a priority for the commission.
On other issues, Peirce said it is often easier for the SEC to charge corporations than individuals and that the SEC needs more staffers with expertise in the fixed-income markets.
Without going into specifics, Peirce said broker-dealers are not getting the kind of regulation the nation needs.
“Innovation is being slowed,” she said.
The committee has not scheduled a confirmation vote on the nominees.
If the two are confirmed, as expected, the commission would be made up of four women and one man—the first time in the 81-year history of the agency that women would hold four seats. Until 2009, women had never had a majority of the full five-member Commission.