[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 150 (Monday, September 15, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6592-S6593]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                      Nomination of Stephen Miran

  Mr. KIM. Mr. President, I rise today to raise my concerns about a 
vote we are about to take on the nomination of Stephen Miran for the 
Board of the Federal Reserve.
  I rise because the scarcest resource that we have in politics right 
now is trust, and, unfortunately, trust is also the most important 
resource we need to heal our broken Nation.
  I took part in a hearing 2 weeks ago for the nomination of Dr. Miran. 
I have had a chance to be a part of a lot of different confirmations 
here during my time in the Senate so far, and I have heard a lot of 
different crazy things, but, still, one part of this hearing really 
stood out to me.
  Now, mind you, this is someone who previously said:

       To pretend that one can easily shift between highly 
     political and allegedly nonpolitical roles without letting 
     political biases inform policy is at best naive--and at worst 
     sinister.

  Those are the words of Dr. Miran himself talking about the concerns 
of politicization of the Federal Reserve, about the inability to be 
able to separate some of our political biases from the work that needs 
to happen at the Fed if we have people who are too close to the White 
House, too close to the President.
  He is someone who criticized previous Democratic nominees to the Fed 
positions for their closeness to Democratic Presidents and for serving 
in their administrations. He even called for a cooling-off period that 
would ban service in the executive branch following service on the Fed 
Board.
  But in this hearing, we heard something altogether different, and it 
is something that caught my attention, which is that Dr. Miran, who 
currently serves at the White House as the top economic adviser to 
President Trump, serving as the head of the Council of Economic 
Advisers, has no problem with himself being nominated for this role on 
the Fed Board.
  In fact, because this role is to serve the remainder of a term on the 
Fed Board, which is a few months, Dr. Miran has stated and confirmed to 
us in the hearing that he will not resign his position at the White 
House, even if he takes upon this role of serving on the Federal 
Reserve Board. He will instead take a leave of absence from the White 
House, which means that he will technically still be attached to the 
White House, despite also serving on the Federal Reserve Board. This 
has never been done before.
  I see this as a deep breach of trust. And I urge my colleagues, 
especially my Senate Republican colleagues, to demand that Dr. Miran 
resign from the White House if he is confirmed. This should be a 
requirement.
  I asked Dr. Miran how he can square his past statements about 
concerns about the revolving door between politics and, in particular, 
the White House and nominees to Fed positions. He downplayed it and 
said, oh, he was just talking about a package of reforms that hadn't 
passed yet and that he shouldn't be held to the standard that he 
himself put forward.

  I will be honest with you. It is straight-up painful to watch. He 
tried to excuse his behavior, saying that his attorneys had advised him 
to take this

[[Page S6593]]

leave of absence. He was saying he was just doing what his attorneys 
told him to do. That is misleading. What he didn't say is that these 
attorneys are telling him what is best for his career, not what is best 
for the American people.
  I wanted to share the story because it is one of the most blatant 
examples that I have seen in my time in the Senate so far of a lack of 
integrity, to twist yourself in knots because you want a job, to betray 
beliefs that you previously stated that you hold central to your 
beliefs of the work that we are doing just because you want a job.
  I will be honest with you. I don't understand that, and I think that 
that is a dangerous behavior. What bothers me is that it really shows 
who a person is: Someone who is willing to quickly and easily betray 
their previously held strong beliefs, what does it say about other 
things that they believe in? Why should I believe what Dr. Miran said 
about his positions on our economy, on interest rates, about Fed 
independence when I see how quickly he is willing to change his mind 
when it suits him? He believes something until it is inconvenient for 
his career.
  This raises a question for all of us to consider, which is, Why does 
it matter to the rest of us? Why should we care? DC is filled with 
ambitious people. What does it matter at the Federal Reserve?
  For those of you watching, maybe you have never heard of Dr. Miran. 
Maybe many of us in this country can't name other members of the 
Federal Reserve Board, so why should we care about this nomination and 
what he has said?
  What I hope we understand is the importance of this choice. We need 
to understand the role that the Federal Reserve plays in this moment 
and how Dr. Miran can almost singlehandedly reshape it.
  The Federal Reserve, in short, sets monetary policy. The conditions 
that banks use to decide interest rates for your mortgage or auto 
loans, it sets them. Your banks, it regulates them to make sure that 
they are being responsible; the prices of your everyday goods, it 
determines the amount of money in circulation to keep those at a stable 
and reasonable cost. All of those things are important. They are part 
of our day-to-day lives. The impact of the Federal Reserve has 
significant impact on our ability to save and to build wealth so we can 
pass on to our kids and our grandkids.
  Because these things are important, it is critical that the Federal 
Reserve be allowed to act independently--independent of political 
whims, independent of political pressures, independent of political 
motives. The Fed's job is to execute all of those important tasks with 
your priorities in mind.
  We want people who have such a powerful role affecting our economy to 
be solely focused on what is best for our economy. That is why 
political interference must be constrained.
  I hope all of us can agree that we don't want a President--or any 
politician, for that matter--being able to order interest rates to be 
lowered ahead of an election so that it could benefit them politically. 
Right? That is something I hope all of us can agree would be wrong. 
Then how is it that we can be OK with someone still listed as an 
employee at the White House to sit on the Federal Reserve Board? Oh, 
and the reason he gives, that this is a temporary appointment, that 
just makes things worse.
  Dr. Miran is hoping to get President Trump to nominate him for the 
full term after this temporary term ends, but because he is staying on 
the White House staff on a leave of absence, he is doing so to hedge 
his bets just in case that doesn't work out for him, just in case 
President Trump decides to nominate someone else for the next term next 
year.
  This exposes the heart of the problem, which is that this vote that 
we are about to take here in the Senate--Dr. Miran thinks of this as 
just a tryout, as just an audition, as just an opportunity for him to 
be able to do this and try to stay on President Trump's good side, 
keeping his fingers crossed for Trump to approve of his work so that he 
gets the full nomination next year.
  Of course--of course--he will feel pressure to do as Trump wants him 
to do in the interim about interest rates and feel beholden to him.
  So either Dr. Miran can decide that he wants to remove himself from 
consideration of the full term next year or he should do what he 
himself has said that we should have, which is a ban on people being 
able to go through this resolving door. He should at least step up and 
say that he will resign his position at the White House if this vote 
confirms him for this position because these challenges and these 
conflicts of interests are exactly why Dr. Miran previously called for 
a ban on this resolving door between the Fed and the White House and 
the executive branch.
  There are many other reasons for Senators to oppose this nomination, 
but I wanted to focus on this one because I believe a majority of 
Senators agree with this lack of independence with this decision by Dr. 
Miran to be able to continue to stay at the White House.
  Stephen Miran had every opportunity to do the right thing and ensure 
no conflicts of interest occur, but he refused. He had the chance to 
earn the trust of the U.S. Senate and the American people, but he 
refused.
  But we here in this Chamber can do the right thing. If Dr. Miran 
wants his nomination to go forward, he should commit to resigning from 
the White House; otherwise, this Chamber should not move and vote his 
nomination through.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Moreno). The Senator from Rhode Island.