June 04, 2025

On Senate Floor, Warren Urges Colleagues to Vote Against Bowman Nomination

“During her tenure, (Bowman) has consistently prioritized Wall Street over Main Street. She has weakened safeguards on the largest banks in the country and has opposed common sense rules to promote financial stability, protect consumers, and drive investment in communities across the country.” 

Watch Speech Here (YouTube)

Washington, DC – Today on the Senate floor, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Ranking Member of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, urged her Senate colleagues to vote against Michelle Bowman’s nomination to be the Vice Chair for Supervision of the Federal Reserve Board.

Below are Ranking Member Warren’s remarks as prepared for delivery:

Mr./Madame President, I rise today to talk about the nomination of Michelle Bowman to be the Federal Reserve Board’s Vice Chair for Supervision.

Governor Bowman has served on the Federal Reserve Board since 2018, when she was confirmed as the first Governor required to have community bank experience. But during her tenure, she has consistently prioritized Wall Street over Main Street. She has weakened safeguards on the largest banks in the country and has opposed common sense rules to promote financial stability, protect consumers, and drive investment in communities across the country. And just yesterday, in another Wall Street giveaway, she voted to lift the asset cap that was placed on Wells Fargo to reign in its decades-long track record of customer abuses despite any public evidence that Wells Fargo has turned a new leaf. 

Governor Bowman’s actions have already imposed serious costs on small businesses and households. It would be especially dangerous to put her in charge of further deregulating Wall Street now, just as President Trump has the economy on the edge of a cliff. Democrats on the Banking Committee unanimously opposed her nomination as Vice Chair for Supervision. I urge all of my colleagues to do the same on the floor. 

In the years leading up to the 2008 financial crisis, the Federal Reserve Board effectively abdicated its statutory role as a financial regulator and supervisor. As a result, the agency was asleep at the wheel as dangerous risks built up in the financial system, especially in the subprime mortgage market. Households, small businesses, and the broader economy suffered the consequences of this negligence. Congress established the Vice Chair for Supervision position after the 2008 financial crisis to ensure that the Fed never again de-prioritized its financial regulation and supervision responsibilities. 

But in her six years on the Federal Reserve Board, Governor Bowman has hacked away bit by bit at the safeguards put in place after the 2008 financial crisis.

Let’s look at her record. Governor Bowman has weakened critical safeguards for the largest Wall Street banks. She voted to reduce big banks’ loss absorbing capital requirements and to undermine the stress testing framework, leaving big banks more vulnerable to collapse. She also voted to allow big banks to gamble with people’s deposits in financial markets, including through increased investments in hedge funds and private equity funds. These actions have allowed Wall Street banks to take on riskier bets and juice dividends, buybacks, and executive compensation at the expense of financial stability. 

She also voted to deregulate massive banks with $100 billion - $250 billion in assets. That error in judgment came back to bite our country quickly, causing the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th largest bank failures in U.S. history just a few years later when three deregulated banks, First Republic Bank, Silicon Valley Bank, and Signature Bank, all failed in 2023. Governor Bowman has refused to take any accountability for her votes that led to this banking turmoil and opposed common sense rules to strengthen the resilience of large banks even after the failures. 

Governor Bowman also voted to approve more than 800 bank merger applications, including Morgan Stanley’s major acquisition of E*TRADE and Capital One’s recent acquisition of Discover, which created the largest credit card company in the country. Her lax approach to bank mergers undermines competition, inflicts costs on consumers, threatens financial stability, and poses a direct risk to the future of community banks in the country. 

In addition, Governor Bowman opposed even modest improvements to the Community Reinvestment Act, a 50-year old law that was created to prevent racist lending practices by big banks and ensure that all communities have access to critical financial services. Last year, she was the only Fed Governor to vote against a rule that would have updated the CRA regulations for the first time in nearly 30 years and increased banks’ investment in communities of color, rural and native communities, and other low-and moderate-income areas.

Beyond her deeply troubling policy record, Governor Bowman has also demonstrated a concerning lack of independence from the White House during her nomination process. At her hearing, she refused to recognize the economic uncertainty created by President Trump’s tariffs and their potential impact on financial stability – putting her at odds with Chair Powell, Fed staff, and economic experts across the political spectrum. It was clear that Governor Bowman did not want to be seen as even indirectly criticizing President Trump. 

She also stated that she plans to submit regulatory actions to the White House for review, undermining the Fed’s independence and all-but-guaranteeing a new deregulatory bonanza for Wall Street. And she has refused to address whether she met with President-elect Trump or his transition team while on an official Federal Reserve-funded trip to West Palm Beach in November 2024. 

Our economy is in a precarious moment. President Trump’s disastrous economic mismanagement is raising costs on families, putting jobs at risk, and threatening to decimate small businesses across the country. Deregulating Wall Street right now would throw gasoline on Trump’s economic fire. The last thing families and small businesses need is another massive financial crash. I urge my colleagues to oppose Michelle Bowman’s nomination. 

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