Mark P. Wetjen, President Obama’s nominee to succeed the departing Commissioner Michael Dunn at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), assured a Senate panel Thursday that he will be able to make informed and reasoned rulemaking decisions to implement the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act, although he will be late to the game.

“I have been monitoring the work of the Commission for quite some time now,” Wetjen said during his confirmation hearing before the Senate Agriculture Committee. For nearly seven years, Wetjen has been a senior policy adviser to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), who recommended him for the seat on the CFTC. Wetjen was nominated by Obama in May.

The Senate agriculture panel is expected to vote out his nomination to the full Senate within the next few weeks, a committee spokesman said.

Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas, the ranking Republican on the panel, expressed concern that Wetjen would be unable to make informed decisions when he was being “parachuted” into the middle of the rulemaking process at the CFTC. He asked Wetjen whether he planned to “hit the ground running” or to recuse himself from voting on some of the rules.

By the time Wetjen is confirmed by the full Senate and arrives at the Commission, Roberts estimated that there will be 40 final rules remaining to implement Title VII of Dodd-Frank, which regulates for the first time the $300 trillion derivatives market in the United States. “I’m going to be interested in how the nominee plans to climb this mountain of information before voting,” Roberts said.

Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) asked Wetjen to interpret the congressional intent on the application of margin to end-users. “The purpose of Dodd-Frank is to mitigate systemic risk, but that can be done in a way without placing unnecessary [margin] burdens on commercial end-users and captive finance companies,” he said.

“It is critical that the Commission hews closely to the intent of Congress when finalizing its rules. That means, for instance, that the final rules should avoid imposing unnecessary cost burdens on commercial firms that use swaps. It also means that the final rules should seek to minimize unintended consequences that could impair U.S. competitiveness or liquidity of our markets.”

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