Senate Confirms Tigert’s Nomination to Head the FDIC

Ricki Tigert can take the yellow ribbon off her law office door. The Senate finally confirmed her nomination to be chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. on Tuesday.

Her law partners hung the ribbon as a show of sympathy and support after her nomination became ensnarled in Whitewater politics eight months ago.

Republicans had held up the 49-year-old banking attorney’s nomination to force Democrats to hold hearings on President Clinton’s Whitewater investments in Arkansas.

Seventy-one hours of Senate hearings were conducted. But opponents, led by Sen. Alfonse D’Amato of New York, the Banking Committee’s senior Republican, then argued that it was inappropriate for a Clinton friend to head a regulatory agency involved in the Whitewater investigation.

In February, Tigert agreed to remove herself from any Whitewater-related decisions if confirmed.

The 90-7 vote approving Tigert’s nomination came after the Senate averted a threatened Republican filibuster 63 to 32, with seven Republicans joining 56 Democrats in voting to limit debate.

Tigert becomes the first woman to head a federal banking agency and takes over an FDIC board that has been without a confirmed chairman since the August, 1992, death of William Taylor.

Tigert was nominated 11 months ago and was recommended 17 to 1 by the Senate Banking Committee in February. Republicans had blocked a vote by the full Senate in the intervening months.

The FDIC insures $2.5 trillion deposited in banks and savings institutions. It also serves as the primary federal regulator of the 8,800 smaller state-chartered banks that aren’t members of the Federal Reserve System.

As she begins her five-year term, Tigert will face the task of shrinking the FDIC, which had expanded rapidly to handle the hundreds of banks that failed in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It has about 12,000 employees and a $2-billion budget.