The Senate Banking Committee on Thursday just barely approved President Trump’s nominee to join the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, which sent the nomination to the full Senate with weak support.
The committee voted 13-12, along strict party lines, to approve the nomination of Carnegie Mellon professor Marvin Goodfriend.
Goodfriend failed to gain any Democratic support after a poor performance at his confirmation hearing, in which he became flustered as Democrats confronted him with past statements he made suggesting that he expected higher inflation to result from the Fed’s crisis-era stimulus efforts. Inflation has run below the Fed’s target for most of the past five years.
“We can’t take a chance on someone with a decade-long record of prioritizing hypothetical inflation over real people losing real jobs,” Ohio’s Sherrod Brown, the top Democrat on the committee, said at Thursday’s vote.
Goodfriend can still be confirmed, but only if Republicans lose no more than one GOP vote. Republicans have a 51-49 majority in the Senate, and in the event of a 50-50 tie, Vice President Pence could break that tie in Goodfriend’s favor.
The Fed board needs help. Currently, it only has three of seven board members in place, complicating business.
Also Thursday, the committee advanced President Trump’s nominee to helm the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, in a voice vote. Only Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., asked to be recorded as a “no” vote on the nomination of Jelena McWilliams, a former bank lawyer and Republican congressional staffer.
