WASHINGTON — The Senate confirmed Kelly Loeffler in a bipartisan vote Wednesday to lead the Small Business Administration, bringing President Trump’s list of total cabinet officials to 18.
The upper chamber voted 52-46 to approve Loeffler’s nomination, with Nevada Democratic Sen. Jacky Rosen joining 51 Republicans in support.
Forty-six Democrats were opposed. Republican Sens. Jerry Moran of Kansas and Dan Sullivan of Alaska did not vote.
A former GOP senator herself, Loeffler will now lead the agency with a roughly $1 billion budget tasked with providing loans, grants and financial coaching to small-business owners nationwide.
With a roughly $1 billion net worth, Loeffler had served as an executive at the financial services firm Intercontinental Exchange before being appointed to the US Senate to finish out the term of the late Sen. Johnny Isakson.
The former Georgia senator lost in a runoff election to current Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock in January 2021, even as she embraced Trump and blasted out campaign ads to Peach State voters touting herself as “more conservative than Attila the Hun.”
Her husband, Jeff Sprecher, serves as CEO of Intercontinental Exchange and is the chairman of the New York Stock Exchange.
Loeffler promised to help Trump, 78, usher in a “golden era of prosperity and growth” during her confirmation hearing before the Senate Small Business Committee last month, by “ending inflation, cutting taxes, unleashing American energy dominance, slashing regulation, and reining in fraud, waste, and abuse across government.”
She also pledged to donate her more than $200,000 annual salary as SBA administrator to charity, if confirmed, as she had done with her $174,000 Senate salary between 2019 and 2021.
“Sen. Loeffler is immensely qualified for this role,” said Small Business Committee Chairwoman Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) in a floor speech last Thursday.
“As a successful businesswoman, it is abundantly clear that Senator Loeffler truly understands what it takes to be an entrepreneur and will be an effective voice for small businesses across America.”
Loeffler also gave Ernst assurances that the SBA would be conducting “a full-scale audit” to “uncover any improper spending,” the Iowa Republican said.
Still, the SBA head courted controversy in the past when she and her husband dumped millions of dollars in stocks at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Loeffler was among several senators who sold shares after sitting in on a Jan. 24 Senate Intelligence Committee briefing — including the panel’s chairman, then-Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC).
In 1953, former President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed off on the legislation that created the SBA — and since it has often provided relief to business owners struggling from natural disasters, making Loeffler’s appointment timely following the devastation of wildfires in California and hurricanes on the East Coast.
“Small business is in Kelly Loeffler’s blood,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) said in a Wednesday floor speech. “She grew up on her family’s fourth-generation farm in Illinois.
“In addition to the farm, her dad ran a small trucking company,” he continued. “And as a young woman, Kelly Loeffler worked in the soybean fields and waited tables at small restaurants in the heartland. And she was the first person in her family to graduate from college before embarking on a successful career in business herself.”
