President Donald Trump plans to nominate Michelle W. Bowman to a 14-year term on the Federal Reserve Board, the White House announced Tuesday.
Ms. Bowman is currently a member of the Fed board, representing the interests of community banks. The Senate approved her initial nomination to fill a vacancy in November by a 64-34 vote. Her current term expires in January 2020 and, if confirmed once more, her new term would begin in February 2020.
In 2014, Congress passed legislation that requires the Fed board to have at least one member with community bank or community bank supervision experience. Allan Landon was nominated to fill the seat in 2015 but didn't receive a hearing.
Ms. Bowman previously served as the Kansas state bank commissioner and as an executive at Farmers & Drovers Bank.
The seven-member Fed board currently has two vacancies. Mr. Trump announced plans to nominate Stephen Moore, a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation, to the board last month. In January, Nellie Liang, a senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution whom Mr. Trump nominated in September, withdrew her nomination citing "the likelihood of a prolonged process (that) could have left me in professional limbo for too long."
Mr. Trump nominated Marvin Goodfriend, the Friends of Allan Meltzer Professor of Economics at Carnegie Mellon University's Tepper School of Business, to the board in 2017. After clearing the Senate Banking Committee along a 13-12 party-line vote last year, Mr. Goodfriend's nomination was never considered by the full Senate and has since lapsed with the start of a new Congress this year.
At its most recent meeting in March, the Federal Open Market Committee left the federal funds rate unchanged and reduced the number of projected rate hikes in 2019 to zero from two. Its next meeting is April 30-May 1.
