The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee approved by a 12-10 vote Thursday the nomination of Lisa Gomez to head the Labor Department's Employee Benefits Security Administration, the agency overseeing retirement plan rules.
Her nomination now moves to the full Senate.
In late July, President Joe Biden nominated Gomez, a partner at Cowen Weiss and Simon in New York, to head EBSA.
Brad Campbell, partner at Faegre Drinker's Washington office and former head of EBSA, said on the law firm's recent Inside the Beltway webcast that Gomez is likely to receive a bipartisan Senate confirmation by year-end.
During her confirmation hearing before the HELP Committee in early October, Gomez — who will be central in helping Labor craft a new fiduciary rule — said that if confirmed, she looks forward to working with the Securities and Exchange Commission as well as with Labor "to be briefed on the efforts of looking at the definition of a fiduciary in different contexts, and taking another look at the conflict of interest rule and how it would apply in different situations."
Campbell said on the webcast that Labor is not going to meet its December deadline to release a new fiduciary rule, and that a new rule wouldn't likely come until "the end of spring."
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