The Senate voted 48-47 on Monday night to confirm Stephen Miran, chair of the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers, to serve as a Federal Reserve governor in a term that ends in January.
Miran was sworn in Tuesday and is attending a meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee to determine interest rates, according to a Fed spokesperson.
Also attending is Lisa Cook, the Fed governor whom President Donald Trump tried to dismiss but whose position was upheld Monday by an appeals court.
Miran’s confirmation fell largely along party lines. Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska was the sole Republican to vote against Miran joining the Fed.
Murkowski told reporters Monday her “no” vote came down to the appearance that Miran, who is taking unpaid leave from his White House job while serving at the Fed, isn’t guaranteed to maintain independence from President Donald Trump’s opinions.
“We want it, need [the Fed] to be that independent board, and so anything that would compromise even the perception of independence, I was looking at very carefully,” Murkowski said Monday, according to The New York Times.
Miran’s reluctance to cut ties with the White House was core to several Democratic senators’ arguments against his confirmation.
“This arrangement would not serve the best interest of the American people,” Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island and seven fellow Democrats wrote Sept. 5 in a letter to Miran. “It is ludicrous to contend that you could exercise independent judgment regarding monetary policy and financial regulation [while still holding a White House role].”
Before a Senate Banking Committee vote last week, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-MA, called Miran’s potential dual role “an obvious Trump loyalty test.”
“He knows that every vote he takes determines whether he can go back to his White House job,” Warren said. “That is not independence – that is servitude.”
Indeed, Trump himself has said Miran would “have a big influence on [Fed Chair Jerome Powell] getting his [interest] rates down,” according to The New York Times.
Trump has pushed unabashedly to cut interest rates, badgering Powell in social media posts for not doing so.
“‘Too Late’ MUST CUT INTEREST RATES, NOW, AND BIGGER THAN HE HAD IN MIND,” Trump posted Monday morning on Truth Social, using a nickname for Powell.
In a speech at the Kansas City Fed’s annual symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, last month, Powell primed the market for an interest-rate cut.
Miran, at his nomination hearing, said he sought legal advice on how to proceed with his CEA and Fed roles, and counsel determined unpaid leave was appropriate.
“The term being nominated is a little more than four months. As long as that is the advice of counsel, I will follow the law,” Miran said.
Miran may, however, stay at the central bank until his successor is confirmed.
At least one past Fed official has spoken out against Miran’s dual role.
“It was a very bad signal not to resign the position in the administration,” Eric Rosengren, who served as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston until 2021, told The Wall Street Journal. “It’s very puzzling unless you wanted to show in a defiant way that you didn’t care about being perceived as independent.”
Greg Mankiw, a Harvard economist who held Miran’s CEA role under former President George W. Bush, compared the arrangement to an attorney general taking temporary leave to serve as a justice on the Supreme Court.
“I see it as part of the overall Trump strategy of bringing monetary policy more under White House control,” Makiw told The Wall Street Journal.
