SEC Chair nominee Paul Atkins has just advanced through the Senate Banking Committee.
The votes were fully split across partisan lines, meaning that not a single Democrat has supported the nomination.
Atkins's nomination will now move to the full Senate, but there will be very little suspense since he is widely expected to be a lock for confirmation.
The former SEC commissioner was nominated to spearhead the agency following a closely watched race to replace Gary Gensler.
Gensler officially left the agency on Jan. 20. The top securities watchdog is currently being spearheaded by Acting Chairman Mark Uyeda.
Under Uyeda's short-lived leadership, the SEC has already established a cryptocurrency task force and abandoned several high-profile enforcement cases against major crypto firms.
Atkins has taken a lot of heat from Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. As reported by U.Today, the influential progressive Democrat recently stated that the libertarian conservative got "pretty much everything wrong" on the cusp of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) when he was an SEC commissioner.
Vladislav Sopov
Dan Burgin