[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 71 (Thursday, May 17, 2012)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3248-S3252]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           EXECUTIVE SESSION

                                 ______
                                 

NOMINATION OF JEREMY C. STEIN TO BE A MEMBER OF THE BOARD OF GOVERNORS 
                     OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE SYSTEM

                                 ______
                                 

NOMINATION OF JEROME H. POWELL TO BE A MEMBER OF THE BOARD OF GOVERNORS 
                     OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE SYSTEM

  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, the 
Senate will proceed to executive session to consider the following 
nominations, which the clerk will report.
  The legislative clerk read the nominations of Jeremy C. Stein, of 
Massachusetts, to be a Member of the Board of Governors of the Federal 
Reserve System and Jerome H. Powell, of Maryland, to be a Member of the 
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, there 
will be 90 minutes of debate in the usual form.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. CORKER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. CORKER. Mr. President, I wanted to speak for a moment today about 
the vote we are going to have this afternoon on the Federal Reserve 
Board members who have been nominated. I have met both of these 
individuals, and I plan to vote for them today at noon. But I want tell 
you why I am going to do that. I am very concerned about the overly 
accommodative efforts that are taking place right now at the Federal 
Reserve. I think these low interest rates over long periods of time 
will create inflation in our country. I believe the Fed has been 
proactive in recent times in ways that make me nervous. As soon as QE2 
was announced, I immediately called the Chairman of the Federal 
Reserve, and we had a meeting in our office to talk about the concerns 
he had and the concerns we in our office have.
  I would love to see the Federal Reserve have a single mandate like 
the European Central Bank has and the Bank of England has, where their 
sole purpose is really price stability. I would also love to see 
Congress act responsibly and deal with many fiscal and other kinds of 
issues that are holding down our economy. I think sometimes the Federal 
Reserve feels as though it is the only entity that is actually acting 
to try to stimulate our economy. I understand the position they are in, 
having a dual mandate, which I think is inappropriate and hopefully 
over time will change.
  These two nominees, candidly, do not represent the kind of a more 
hawkish position I would like to see the Federal Reserve take where 
they are concerned about price stability over the long haul. At the 
same time, both of these gentlemen are qualified. I don't think there 
is any question that someone would say that these two individuals are 
qualified. We do have Fed Presidents from around the country who 
typically, as far as monetary policy on the Federal Reserve Board, do 
act in more hawkish ways and probably more represent the way that I 
would view things as they ought to be in some of the accommodations the 
Federal Reserve has continued to make.
  I hope we do not get into a situation where we end up having--you can 
actually call it QE4. Some people might call it QE3. I hope that does 
not happen and that we will continue to press the Federal Reserve 
towards that end in any way we can.
  I also know that there is going to be an election in November and 
that whoever the next President is--obviously, as you would expect, I 
hope there is a change in occupancy at the White House this November, 
someone who will actually try to solve the problems our Nation has. But 
whoever the next President is, they will have the opportunity to 
appoint the next Chairman of the Federal Reserve very soon and also the 
next Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve.
  So I guess what I would say in closing is that I am going to support 
these nominees because they are qualified. I do hope they will press 
the Chairman of the Federal Reserve to be more concerned about price 
stability, especially into the future. But I do not want to vote no 
today because I think it sets a precedent of saying that, look, these 
guys are qualified--I do not think there is any question about that. 
And I want the next President--who I hope, again, is someone different 
than we have today--to have the opportunity with my colleagues on the 
other side of the aisle--if a change is to occur and if the President 
has the opportunity to appoint a new Federal Reserve Chairman and a new 
Vice Chairman and he deems them qualified and this body deems them 
qualified, I hope we are going to have the opportunity to fill those 
positions.
  So, again, I plan to vote for these nominees in an effort to continue 
to cause this place to focus in the way I think it should. They are not 
ideal, from my perspective, but they are qualified.
  I might remind friends on my side of the aisle that we did have 
someone who was nominated several months ago who was not in the 
mainstream. This person was not in the mainstream of thinking, and this 
person did not become a member of the Federal Reserve Board. So we have 
ended up having two nominees who are more middle of the road. They are 
not as hawkish as I would like to see them be. They are not as 
focused--they possibly will not be as focused on price stability as I 
would like to see them be. But they are qualified. They are not out of 
the mainstream. And I do plan to support them.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Brown of Ohio). The clerk will call the 
roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, at noon the Senate will be voting on 
two of President Obama's nominees to the Federal Reserve Board. These 
are important positions. They have long terms. They come at a time when 
our economy is in trouble and doing its best to recover. In these 
votes, the Senate will be acting in the way it should, and let me say 
why I am saying that.
  On Tuesday of this week, someone most of us know--Marty Paone, who 
was the Democratic secretary in the Senate for 13 years, until 2008--
wrote an article in the Hill, a Capitol Hill newspaper. The headline is 
``Senate rule changes come with risk,'' but all I want to refer to 
today is a description of the Senate that is on our Senate Web site. 
Marty describes our own Web site in the article and says:

       . . . [t]he legislative process on the Senate Floor [as] a 
     balance between the rights guaranteed to Senators under the 
     standing rules and the need for Senators to forgo some of 
     these rights in order to expedite business.

  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record 
the article I just referred to following my remarks.

[[Page S3249]]

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  (See exhibit 1.)
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, what is reflected on the Senate Web 
site is the action the Senate is about to take at noon today.
  There has been at least one vacancy--and sometimes two--on the 
Federal Reserve Board since 2006. That is 6 years ago. That is one 
whole Senate term. The Federal Reserve Board has seven Governors 
nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate. So during that 
whole 6 year-period, it has had one or two of those seven positions 
vacant. And this has been during a time--since 2008--of the greatest 
economic crisis we have had since the Great Depression.
  The President tried once to nominate someone to that position who 
wasn't accepted by the Senate. So in January the President took the 
unusual step of nominating a well-qualified Republican, Jay Powell, as 
well as a well-qualified Democrat.
  There is a good deal of unease in the Republican caucus--as I am sure 
was reflected in some of the comments on the floor--about the response 
the Federal Reserve Board has taken to the economic crisis since 2008. 
Senators on this side of the aisle who have those concerns have a 
perfect right to filibuster, to object, and perhaps to kill these two 
nominations. But the Republican Senators have realized that if we were 
to do that to President Obama's nominees today, then if there were a 
President Romney after the first of the year, the Democrats very likely 
would say: We will object to President Romney's nominees, and there 
would still be vacancies on the Federal Reserve Board at a time of 
economic crisis.
  Just as the President took a step toward making government work by 
nominating a well-qualified Republican to one of these two Federal 
Reserve Governor positions, I want to acknowledge the fact that 
Republican Senators who feel strongly about this issue have taken a 
step forward and forgone--in the words of our Senate Web site--some of 
their rights so that we can move straight to a vote today, up or down, 
at 60-votes, on each of the two nominees.
  The article to which I referred said that sometimes in the Senate, 
even though we all have many rights, we have to forgo some of those 
rights in order to make the place work. That has been happening more 
lately. Republican Senators in the minority have been occasionally 
forgoing some of our rights to slow down a bill coming to the floor or 
to insist on an amendment that is not relevant. The majority leader has 
on some occasions forgone his right to block our amendments. We would 
like for him to do that more often, but it has been happening more 
lately.
  I think of the scheduling difficulty Senator Reid and Senator 
McConnell had on district judges a few weeks ago. Instead of letting 
that issue blow up the Senate, they met privately and agreed they would 
proceed at a schedule the two of them determined. As a result, we have 
been considering and confirming district judges at a regular rate.
  Their agreement permitted us to move to a jobs bill, which benefitted 
startup companies, to move ahead. The House Republicans had already 
passed the bill, then we passed it, and the President of the United 
States then signed it into law.
  The Senate moved forward on the FAA authorization bill after many 
efforts and failed attempts to do so.
  We have a 2-year highway bill which the Senate has passed and which 
is now in conference. I would like for it to be a 7-year bill, but we 
have made progress and passed a 2-year bill.
  The Senate had a big debate on the Postal Service. I would have liked 
to have seen a stronger bill come out of the Senate, and I hope the 
House will send us back a stronger bill. But we had 39 relevant 
amendments to that bill considered, we worked on it, and we are moving 
toward dealing with the big debt the Postal Service has.
  This week we considered an extension of the Ex-Im Bank and took up a 
bill passed by the Republican House. We offered and voted on five 
relevant amendments to the Ex-Im Bank bill and disposed of the bill 
that same day.
  The majority leader says we have the FDA bill coming up--very 
important because it affects medicines that Americans everywhere depend 
on. Senator Enzi and Senator Harkin have worked that bill through the 
HELP Committee. It has broad support on both sides of the aisle. The 
majority leader may allow it to come up only with relevant amendments, 
and we may be able to consider it and pass it.
  Earlier this year several of us came to the floor and complimented 
Senator Reid, the majority leader, and Senator McConnell, the 
Republican leader, for saying that they want to do their best to pass 
all the appropriations bills this year. That is the basic work of the 
Senate--paying our bills and doing our oversight. Only twice since the 
year 2000 has the Senate passed every single appropriations bill.
  I don't want to make too much of this progress, but it is a little 
progress, and it is an example of the Senate working the way the Senate 
is supposed to work.
  Now, let's be honest about the fact that this is a more partisan 
country than it was even 10 years ago, and that partisanship is 
reflected in the Senate. By any definition there is a narrower range of 
views on the Republican side of the aisle and a narrower range of views 
on the Democratic side of the aisle. But we still have our job to do. 
Our job is not just to stand and express our views. If our job was to 
only stand and express our views, each one of us would always be right 
and we wouldn't get anything done. The second part of the job is to 
take our views, put them together, and see if we can get a result.
  Some people say: Well, you are interested in bipartisanship.
  I am not so interested in bipartisanship. That interests me very 
little, to tell you the truth. I am interested in results. I learned in 
the Maryville city schools how to count, and I can count to 60. I know 
that if it takes 60 votes to get anything done in this Senate, it is 
going to have to take some on that side and some on this side to get to 
60. And I know the American people are expecting results--results on 
the debt, results on tax reform, results on fixing No Child Left 
Behind, results on finding a place to put used nuclear fuel. I want to 
be a part of getting those results. We have too many problems to solve 
for us to think we have finished our job simply by announcing our 
positions, stating our principles, and sitting down. We need to take 
those principles and put them together and see whether they can mesh 
and get a result.
  It is not easy to get elected to the Senate. It is very hard to get 
here. Most candidates campaign for a long time, and their campaigns are 
intense for 2 years. They usually have terrific opposition, and people 
say things about them that they don't like. We end up with some very 
talented men and women among the hundred in the Senate.
  It kind of reminds me of country music. A lot of the artists in 
Nashville I know play in every bar they can find and every State fair 
they can find for 20 years, and finally they might get invited to join 
the Grand Ole Opry. Well, being in the Senate for a lot of the last 
year was like being invited to join the Grand Ole Opry and not being 
allowed to sing. The majority leader would bring up a bill and block 
the amendments because he would say the Republicans were keeping him 
from bringing up bills. Our side would say: Well, we are not going to 
let you bring it up unless you let us have amendments. So we would be 
sitting around, twiddling our thumbs, and wasting time when there was a 
lot to do. That is why I am so glad to see some things changing here in 
the Senate over the last few weeks.
  We all have our wishes about what will happen in the November 
election. I hope that after November we will see President Romney and 
that we will see more desks on this side of the aisle, a Republican 
majority. My friends on the other side expect and hope the President 
will be reelected, and they would like to enlarge their majority on the 
other side of the aisle. We don't know whether there will be a 
Republican or a Democratic President. We don't know whether there will 
be 51 or 52 Republican Senators or 51 or 52 Democratic Senators. We do 
know pretty well that there probably won't be many more than 51 or 52 
or 53 Democratic Senators or 51 or 52 or 53 Republican Senators, and we 
all can count, and we all know that is not 60.

[[Page S3250]]

  We also know we are going to get to the end of the year and we are 
going to have taxes to reform, debt to reduce, highways to deal with, 
nuclear waste to do something about, the payroll tax credit expiration, 
and the biggest tax increase in history facing us. We know the 
country's lack of confidence in the future will be greatly relieved if 
it has more confidence in the ability of Washington, DC, to govern this 
country.
  We see what is happening in Europe. We can look at ourselves, and we 
know we have trillions of dollars sitting on the side lines of the 
United States. Part of the reason that money is sitting there is to 
wait to see whether the Senators can do our jobs. Well, doing our jobs 
may require forgoing some of our rights. That is what it says on our 
Web site--that we have the rights, that we can insist on them. And 
sometimes we will. But to get things done in the Senate, sometimes we 
will forgo some of our minority rights and the majority leader, we 
hope, will forgo some of his rights. Then we will be able to move to a 
bill, amend it, vote on it, and get some results. That is what the 
American people would like for us to do.
  We are moving today to vote on a Democratic and a Republican 
nomination by the President. We are doing it without any obstruction by 
Republicans in the minority, who are very well aware and hope there 
will be a President Romney after January who will have a number of 
Federal Reserve appointments to make. And President Romney will hope 
his nominees are entitled to the same respect President Obama's 
nominees are.
  If these two nominees are confirmed today, the Federal Reserve Board 
will have a full complement of seven for the first time since 2006. The 
Federal Reserve will have a full Board at a time of great economic 
crisis for our country and as we come up on the end of the year when we 
will have a fiscal cliff--according to the Chairman of the Federal 
Reserve Board--that will cause Congressional action to take care of.
  So I am here today only to say that I admire the nominees. I know one 
of them well, Jay Powell, who was Under Secretary of the Treasury for 
the first President Bush, an administration in which I served. He has a 
fine reputation. He should be a fine member. I want to acknowledge the 
fact that the President chose to break the stalemate by nominating Mr. 
Powell, a Republican, as well as a Democrat. I want to acknowledge the 
fact that several of my Republican colleagues, who have deep concerns 
about the actions of the Federal Reserve Board during this economic 
crisis over the last few years, have forgone some of their rights and 
allowed us to have an up-or-down vote at noon.
  That, taken with the other actions of the last few months, should 
give a little bit of confidence to the American people that we in the 
Senate are perfectly able to assert our principles, to stand on our 
principles, not to give up on our principles. But then, after we have 
made our speeches, to sit down and come to a result that may not be 
perfect, it may not be ideal to each of our principles, but will be 
good for our country.

                               Exhibit 1

                     [From the Hill, May 15, 2012]

                   Senate Rule Changes Come With Risk

                          (By Martin P. Paone)

       It's an election year, and the Senate can't agree on how to 
     keep the student loan interest rate from doubling on July 1 
     from 3.4 percent to 6.8. While both sides agree that it 
     should be done, how to pay for it is the stumbling block. A 
     party-line cloture vote failure has once again brought calls 
     for changing the Senate's rules by majority vote at the 
     beginning of the next Congress, bypassing the two-thirds 
     cloture requirement if there's opposition.
       The Senate's membership has changed considerably in the 
     last decade, but the Senate rules, with the exception of some 
     changes that were enacted in the Ethics in Government Act, 
     have not undergone any major changes since the Senate went on 
     TV in 1986. While the House has its Rules Committee, which 
     allows the majority to exert its will and control the flow of 
     legislation, the Senate has a tradition of protecting the 
     rights of the minority and of unfettered debate. Its own 
     website describes ``[t]he legislative process on the Senate 
     floor [as] a balance between the rights guaranteed to 
     Senators under the standing rules and the need for senators 
     to forgo some of these rights in order to expedite 
     business.''
       The Senate has for centuries functioned by this compact of 
     selectively forgoing one's rights, but now that compact, to 
     some, seems to have broken down--hence the call to enact 
     rules changes at the beginning of the next Congress by 
     majority vote. These calls have come from Democrats, but they 
     are quick to admit that it should apply regardless of who is 
     in the majority at the time.
       Such changes can certainly quicken the process and allow 
     for the majority to pass legislation and confirm presidential 
     nominees with little hindrance. While the initial rules 
     reforms will probably be limited to restricting debate on a 
     motion to proceed and other less dramatic changes, eventually 
     such majority rules changes at the beginning of a Congress 
     will result in a majority-controlled body similar to the 
     House. Once the Pandora's Box of granting the majority the 
     unfettered ability to change the rules every two years has 
     been opened, having seen how the current situation has 
     escalated, tit for tat over the last 30 years, it is 
     difficult to believe that strict majority rule would not be 
     the ultimate result. Thereafter, a member of the minority in 
     the Senate will be just as impotent as his or her House 
     counterparts.
       Filibusters and the forcing of a cloture vote have been 
     repeatedly used to stop legislation and nominations and to 
     waste time. This is why the number of successful cloture 
     votes, many on noncontroversial nominations and on motions to 
     proceed to bills, has gone up dramatically in recent years. 
     By requiring the cloture vote and then voting for it, the 
     minority has been able to waste considerable time and thus 
     reduce the amount of time available to act on other items of 
     the president's agenda.
       The call for changing the Senate's rules by majority vote 
     at the beginning of a Congress is not new; it was attempted 
     without success in 1953 and 1957 and in 1959. When faced with 
     such an effort, then-Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson 
     negotiated a cloture change back down to two-thirds of those 
     present and voting, but as part of the compromise he had to 
     add Paragraph 2 to Senate Rule V, which states ``The rules of 
     the Senate shall continue from one Congress to the next 
     Congress unless they are changed as provided in these 
     rules.''
       So is it time to ignore the existing rules and change them 
     at the beginning of the next Congress by a majority vote? 
     Perhaps it is time--so many other changes have occurred in 
     our lives in the recent past, why shouldn't the Senate change 
     the way it does business? However, should that occur, one 
     must be prepared to live with the eventual outcome of a 
     Senate where the majority rules and the rights of the 
     minority have been severely curtailed.
       While I can sympathize with those demanding such changes, 
     it's the manner of their implementation that keeps reminding 
     me of the exchange between Sir Thomas Moore and his son-in-
     law, William Roper, in the movie ``A Man For All Seasons'':
       Roper: ``So, now you give the devil the benefit of law!''
       Moore: ``Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through 
     the law to get after the devil?''
       Roper: ``Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do 
     that!''
       Moore: ``Oh? And when the last law was down, and the devil 
     turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws 
     all being flat? . . . Yes, I'd give the devil benefit of law, 
     for my own safety's sake!''

  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the 
absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the 
quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I rise today with gratitude to thank and 
honor my good friends and esteemed colleagues Senator Alexander and 
Senator Johanns. The willingness to vote on two of the President's 
nominees to serve as members of the Board of Governors of the Federal 
Reserve that they have expressed today is exactly the sort of 
bipartisan approach that has historically made the Senate work. I would 
like to honor their efforts to get us back to that proud tradition and 
thank them for their efforts to bring these two distinguished men to a 
vote.
  Serving on the Banking Committee together, I know Senator Johanns to 
always do his due diligence when reviewing any proposed legislation or 
in this case nominees. I am grateful for it. I am also grateful my good 
friend Senator Alexander is the ranking member of the Rules Committee. 
His hard work and insight were invaluable as we worked together to 
streamline presidential appointments and to pass a bill in the Senate 
to reduce the number of positions requiring Senate confirmation last 
year. He has always worked for the betterment of this body. Today is 
another example.
  Yet despite our work last year, we face a backlog of nominations 
which

[[Page S3251]]

gridlocks other important legislative business. That is not how the 
process should work.
  The Senate was designed to be a thoughtful and deliberative body. But 
the American public is harmed when we are not able to get qualified 
people confirmed to positions in a timely manner. Nominees of 
impeccable qualifications and indisputable support have been frozen out 
of the confirmation process. Thankfully that will not be the case 
today.
  At a time when our economy is struggling to maintain forward 
momentum, and the Federal Reserve is faced with difficult decisions 
about how to help the recovery now without creating problems in the 
future, it is absolutely critical that we not leave the Fed 
undermanned. For months now, the Fed has been operating with only 5 of 
its 7 board members, while nominees languish in the Senate confirmation 
process. There is no real question that both of our nominees are 
qualified and bipartisan.
  Jeremy Stein is a well-known Harvard economist, with strong expertise 
in monetary policy and financial regulation. In between two stints at 
Harvard, Stein was on the finance faculty at M.I.T.'s Sloan School of 
Management for 10 years. Stein's research has covered such topics as: 
the behavior of stock prices; corporate investment and financing 
decisions; risk management; capital allocation inside firms; banking; 
financial regulation; and monetary policy.
  He is currently a coeditor of the Quarterly Journal of Economics, and 
was previously a coeditor of the Journal of Economic Perspectives. He 
is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a research 
associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a member of 
the Federal Reserve Bank of New York's Financial Advisory Roundtable. 
From February to July of 2009, he served in the Obama administration, 
as a senior advisor to the Treasury Secretary and on the staff of the 
National Economic Council.
  Jerome Powell is a visiting scholar at the Bipartisan Policy Center 
here in Washington, where he focuses on Federal and State fiscal 
issues. He is also a former lawyer, with experience in investment 
banking and private equity who will bring valuable and broad private 
sector expertise to the Board. From 1997 through 2005, Powell was a 
partner at The Carlyle Group, where he founded and led the Industrial 
Group within the U.S. Buyout Fund. So he has broad experience working 
with manufacturing companies and other industries at the heart of the 
U.S. economy.
  Powell has served on the boards of several charitable and educational 
institutions. He is currently a member of the board of directors of 
D.C. Prep, a charter school operator in Washington, DC; the Bendheim 
Center for Finance at Princeton University; and The Nature Conservancy 
of Washington, DC and Maryland.
  There is no requirement that the President nominate governors from 
the other party, but Mr. Powell is also a Republican who served as 
Undersecretary of the Treasury for Finance under President George H.W. 
Bush, with responsibility for policy on financial institutions, the 
treasury debt market, and related areas. So this is not a partisan 
issue or ideological battle. We have one nominee who served in the 
Obama administration, one nominee who served in the Bush 
administration.

  It is very good that we have come to an agreement. We hope it can set 
the tone for agreements well into the future, this year and in 2013 as 
well.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. All time has expired.
  The question is, Will the Senate advise and consent to the nomination 
of Jeremy C. Stein, of Massachusetts, to be a member of the Board of 
Governors of the Federal Reserve System?
  Mr. ALEXANDER. I ask for the yeas and nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There appears to be a sufficient second.
  The Clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk called the roll.
  Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Hawaii (Mr. Inouye), the 
Senator from Missouri (Mrs. McCaskill), the Senator from Oregon (Mr. 
Merkley), and the Senator from Rhode Island (Mr. Whitehouse) are 
necessarily absent.
  I further announce that, if present and voting, the Senator from 
Rhode Island (Mr. Whitehouse) would vote ``yea.''
  Mr. KYL. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator 
from South Carolina (Mr. DeMint) and the Senator from Illinois (Mr. 
Kirk).
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Hagan). Are there any other Senators in 
the Chamber desiring to vote?
  The result was announced--yeas 70, nays 24, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 102 Ex.]

                                YEAS--70

     Akaka
     Alexander
     Barrasso
     Baucus
     Begich
     Bennet
     Bingaman
     Blumenthal
     Boxer
     Brown (MA)
     Brown (OH)
     Burr
     Cantwell
     Cardin
     Carper
     Casey
     Coats
     Cochran
     Collins
     Conrad
     Coons
     Corker
     Crapo
     Durbin
     Enzi
     Feinstein
     Franken
     Gillibrand
     Grassley
     Hagan
     Harkin
     Hoeven
     Hutchison
     Johanns
     Johnson (SD)
     Kerry
     Klobuchar
     Kohl
     Kyl
     Landrieu
     Lautenberg
     Leahy
     Levin
     Lieberman
     Lugar
     Manchin
     McConnell
     Menendez
     Mikulski
     Murkowski
     Murray
     Nelson (NE)
     Nelson (FL)
     Pryor
     Reed
     Reid
     Rockefeller
     Sanders
     Schumer
     Shaheen
     Shelby
     Snowe
     Stabenow
     Tester
     Udall (CO)
     Udall (NM)
     Warner
     Webb
     Wicker
     Wyden

                                NAYS--24

     Ayotte
     Blunt
     Boozman
     Chambliss
     Coburn
     Cornyn
     Graham
     Hatch
     Heller
     Inhofe
     Isakson
     Johnson (WI)
     Lee
     McCain
     Moran
     Paul
     Portman
     Risch
     Roberts
     Rubio
     Sessions
     Thune
     Toomey
     Vitter

                             NOT VOTING--6

     DeMint
     Inouye
     Kirk
     McCaskill
     Merkley
     Whitehouse
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Three-fifths of the Senators duly chosen and 
sworn having voted in the affirmative, the nomination is confirmed.
  Under the previous order, the question is, Will the Senate advise and 
consent to the nomination of Jerome H. Powell, of Maryland, to be a 
member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System?
  Mr. BURR. Madam President, I ask for the yeas and nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There appears to be a sufficient second.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant bill clerk called the roll.
  Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Hawaii (Mr. Inouye), the 
Senator from Missouri (Mrs. McCaskill), and the Senator from Maryland 
(Ms. Mikulski) are necessarily absent.
  Mr. KYL. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator 
from South Carolina (Mr. DeMint) and the Senator from Illinois (Mr. 
Kirk).
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber 
desiring to vote?
  The result was announced--yeas 74, nays 21, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 103 Ex.]

                                YEAS--74

     Akaka
     Alexander
     Barrasso
     Baucus
     Begich
     Bennet
     Bingaman
     Blumenthal
     Blunt
     Boozman
     Boxer
     Brown (MA)
     Brown (OH)
     Burr
     Cantwell
     Cardin
     Carper
     Casey
     Coats
     Cochran
     Collins
     Conrad
     Coons
     Corker
     Crapo
     Durbin
     Enzi
     Feinstein
     Franken
     Gillibrand
     Grassley
     Hagan
     Harkin
     Hoeven
     Hutchison
     Johanns
     Johnson (SD)
     Kerry
     Klobuchar
     Kohl
     Kyl
     Landrieu
     Lautenberg
     Leahy
     Levin
     Lieberman
     Lugar
     Manchin
     McCain
     McConnell
     Menendez
     Merkley
     Murkowski
     Murray
     Nelson (NE)
     Nelson (FL)
     Portman
     Pryor
     Reed
     Reid
     Rockefeller
     Schumer
     Shaheen
     Shelby
     Snowe
     Stabenow
     Tester
     Udall (CO)
     Udall (NM)
     Warner
     Webb
     Whitehouse
     Wicker
     Wyden

                                NAYS--21

     Ayotte
     Chambliss
     Coburn
     Cornyn
     Graham
     Hatch
     Heller
     Inhofe
     Isakson
     Johnson (WI)
     Lee
     Moran
     Paul
     Risch
     Roberts
     Rubio
     Sanders
     Sessions
     Thune
     Toomey
     Vitter

                             NOT VOTING--5

     DeMint
     Inouye
     Kirk
     McCaskill
     Mikulski

[[Page S3252]]


  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The 60-vote threshold having been achieved, 
the nomination is confirmed.
  The majority leader.

                          ____________________