Senate Confirms Trump’s Nominee Waller To Fed Board

By a completely partisan vote of 48 to 47 (though Rand Paul voted against), The Senate confirmed Trump nominee Christopher Waller to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors – filling one of the two vacant slots on the influential economic body.

Christopher Waller, the research director at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, was confirmed to a term that runs through January 2030. He has attended meetings of the rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee this year in his capacity at the St. Louis Fed. He headed the University of Notre Dame’s economics department before joining the regional Fed bank in 2009.

Interestingly, as WSJ reports, the confirmation marked the first time the Senate had seated a governor in a lame-duck period that follows the November election before the president’s term ends in January, according to Peter Conti-Brown, a Fed historian at the University of Pennsylvania.

Given the vote count and shifts to come (she has lost key Republican support and the Democrats have officially gained another seat), it would appear the chances of Judy Shelton, who was nominated alongside Waller, getting confirmed are shrinking rapidly.

This means Joe Biden, if confirmed by the electoral college, will have one vacancy to fill at The Fed as he begins his term.