Senate votes to confirm Trump pick Stephen Miran to Fed Board

President Trump notched a swift victory Monday night when the Senate confirmed his senior economic adviser to join the Federal Reserve board just hours before officials gather to consider cutting interest rates at a two-day meeting that starts Tuesday.

- Nick Timiraos

The Republican-controlled Senate approved Stephen Miran’s confirmation largely along party lines, on a 48-47 vote, just two weeks after receiving his nomination from the White House, making it the second-fastest Fed confirmation in more than a quarter-century. Miran will fill the seat that Adriana Kugler unexpectedly stepped down from last month.

It is a notable achievement for the White House because Miran, who in March was confirmed as chairman of Trump's Council of Economic Advisers, indicated he wouldn't resign that position. He will be the first executive-branch official to sit on the central bank’s board since a landmark overhaul of the Fed’s governance in 1935.

Miran has said he plans to take an unpaid leave from the CEA to fill the remainder of a Fed board term that runs through January so that he can return to the White House next year if he isn’t nominated to a different central-bank seat. Miran told lawmakers at his confirmation hearing this month he would act independently in the job.

Miran previously has been sharply critical of Fed officials who move into executive-branch jobs and vice versa. In a social-media post two years ago, he said it was impossible to think someone “can go from highly political operative to politically neutral just because he or she gets a promotion. That’s just not how human beings work.”

Miran, who has a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard, worked in the asset-management industry and did a stint as an adviser to the Treasury Department in Trump’s first term.