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In likely his last committee hearing before leaving office in January, the Ohio senator suggested a looser approach to digital assets could only benefit the “corporate elite.”
Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown gave a final message to United States lawmakers in the Senate Banking Committee before he leaves office in January.
In a Dec. 11 notice, Brown, the Senate banking committee chair, issued a warning as part of prepared remarks for a hearing ahead of the next Congress and President-elect Donald Trump being sworn into office. The Ohio lawmaker said that corporate special interests would have “free rein to rip off workers and customers” based on Trump’s nominations so far.
“He’s opening up our government to the highest corporate bidder,” said Senator Brown, referring to Trump. “It will be up to all of you in this room to preserve the [Consumer Financial Protection Bureau] as the one place where ordinary Americans can go that will fight for them.”
Brown added:
“This committee must ready itself for the fights and challenges ahead [...] from algorithmic prices to AI to crypto. All these risks have one thing in common: they all have the potential [to] take even money away from working Americans… and funnel it to the same corporate elite that always seem to come out ahead.”Senator Brown lost his reelection bid in November to Republican Bernie Moreno. Political action committee Fairshake, financed by crypto industry players, poured more than $40 million into ads in the Senate race, which could have helped flip the chamber to Republicans.
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The Ohio senator, who has served as the banking committee chair since 2021, is one of the most vocal crypto skeptics in Congress. Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, another anti-crypto voice in the US government, said she would be the ranking member of the committee after Republicans take a majority in January.
SEC nomination vote delayed for Democratic commissioner
The banking committee was expected to vote on Dec. 11 on whether to send Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) member Caroline Crenshaw’s nomination to the full chamber while Democrats still had a majority in the Senate. Reports from the CFPB hearing suggested that the vote was delayed and not yet taken up at the time of publication.
Crypto interest groups have been calling on lawmakers in the Senate to vote against sending Crenshaw to the SEC for another term, which could put her working at the regulatory body until 2029. After SEC Chair Gary Gensler resigns on Jan. 20, she will be one of only two Democratic policymakers at the regulator, alongside commissioner Jaime Lizárraga.
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