Senate panel approves Biden pick for financial research chief

Nicole Craine/Bloomberg

The Biden administration's long-stalled pick to lead the Office of Financial Research cleared the Senate Banking Committee for a second time on Thursday.

The committee voted 12-11 along party lines — with Democrats holding the majority — to advance Ron Borzekowski, a senior fellow and research director at Yale University, to a confirmation vote by the full Senate.

"If confirmed, he would oversee an office responsible for identifying and guarding against risks that reach across the financial system, an important position, one we need to fill quickly," said Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, who chairs the committee. "[Borzekowski is] qualified. This committee previously advanced his nomination."

The Office of Financial Research, or OFR, is a branch of the Treasury Department established by the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010. If confirmed to the director position, Borzekowski would oversee key research into risks that threaten the entire financial system.

The committee approved Borzekowski's nomination by an identical vote last year, but it was never taken up by the full Senate.

Biden's decision to tap Borzekowski for the position was met with partisan opposition in January 2023. Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., who chairs the House Financial Services Committee, called the pick "unsettling" at the time, citing Borzekowski's tenure at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau from 2011 to 2019.

"I'm concerned Mr. Borzekowski — an original [former CFPB Director] Richard Cordray staffer — will bring the partisan, unaccountable nature of the CFPB to the important work of OFR and the Financial Stability Oversight Council," McHenry said. "The Biden administration's use of FSOC to push the radical left's social and climate policies are part of a troubling trend of rogue Democrat regulators going far beyond their congressionally granted statutory authority."

The OFR director position has been vacant since February 2022, when then-Director Dino Falaschetti resigned from the post. Since then, James Martin — a 20-year Treasury veteran — has served as acting director. 

Along with his time at the CFPB, Borzekowski held several public and private sector jobs before joining Yale last year as director of the new Data-Intensive Social Science Center. His career includes stints at the Federal Reserve Board and on the Financial Crisis Inquiry Committee — a body created by Congress to investigate the collapse of the subprime mortgage market and ensuing financial crisis. He also led the economics division of Amazon Web Services from 2019 to 2022. 

Borzekowski has a bachelor's degree in mathematics from Stanford University, a master's in public policy from Harvard University and a doctorate in economics from Stanford.