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Chamber of Commerce endorses Gary Gensler to serve as SEC chair

The business lobby’s support for the industry scourge comes as a surprise

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March 8, 2021 at 5:23 p.m. EST
Gary Gensler, seen in 2013, is President Biden’s pick to chair the Securities and Exchange Commission. (Evan Vucci/AP)

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the country’s largest business lobbying organization, is throwing its weight behind Gary Gensler, President Biden’s pick to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Gensler, a former Goldman Sachs partner who turned into an aggressive financial industry regulator and progressive darling, was expected to win confirmation thanks to his support among Democrats. But the business lobby’s imprimatur could help him draw some Republican support.

Gensler’s “experience will be critical to ensuring businesses, especially small and emerging growth companies, are able to access needed capital so that they can grow and help enable a robust economic recovery,” Neil Bradley, the chamber’s executive vice president and chief policy officer, wrote in a Monday letter to the Senate Banking Committee. “The Chamber has a history of working constructively with Mr. Gensler, including on issues where we may disagree, and expect he will be a balanced leader of the SEC and strong supporter of competitive capital markets.”

The group’s endorsement comes despite some Senate Republicans accusing Gensler of wielding too heavy a hand against corporate interests as chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in the aftermath of the 2007-2008 global financial crisis.

President Biden’s SEC pick signals companies could face wave of new disclosure rules

“At the CFTC, Mr. Gensler had a history of pushing the legal bounds of the agency’s authority,” Sen. Patrick J. Toomey (Pa.), the top Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, said at Gensler’s confirmation hearing last week. The senator added that Gensler’s performance there “raises questions about whether he will also push the legal bounds of the SEC’s authority, in particular in an attempt to advance a liberal social agenda.”

At the hearing, Gensler made clear that if confirmed he will push corporations to disclose more about their political spending, an effort the chamber has led the fight to quash.

But the group has been shifting its approach across the board. It once marched in lockstep with congressional Republicans. That alliance started to fracture during President Donald Trump’s term. The group split from the GOP on trade and immigration issues and backed several Democratic congressional candidates in the 2020 elections.

This year, the chamber has been vocally supportive of the Biden administration, praising the transition team — on which Gensler served as an adviser — and backing some early moves by the administration on immigration and climate policies.