Yellen nomination passes through Senate panel

Yahoo Finance's Brian Cheung joined Yahoo Finance Live to break down how Janet Yellen is poised to become the first female Treasury chief as her nomination passes through the Senate.

Video Transcript

- Well, we want to start the hour in DC, because it's a big story here that the markets are watching. And that, of course, is the final vote coming for Janet Yellen to confirm her as Treasury Secretary. It's set to get underway in just a few hours. Yahoo Finance's Brian Cheung is standing by for the latest on that for us. Brian.

All right, Adam, it looks like we may have lost Brian's connection. We're going to try and do that. But we talk about what this could mean for the markets, yes, the markets are anticipating that Janet Yellen will be confirmed. It's not going to be a contentious back and forth. But she certainly has her work cut out for her. And it's something that I think the markets, based on their reaction over the last few weeks since we first heard about this, something that the markets are pretty excited about.

ADAM SHAPIRO: They are excited about it. But I think Brian Cheung, we've got that connection restored. Brian, are you there?

BRIAN CHEUNG: Yes, I am here.

ADAM SHAPIRO: So what are the markets looking for [INAUDIBLE].

- Brian, we talking about what we could expect here from Yellen. We talked about the fact that the markets are excited about this. But what exactly sets up tonight, and what we could expect going forward?

BRIAN CHEUNG: Yeah, absolutely. Well, when it comes to Yellen's confirmation, it is expected that she'll be confirmed on a bipartisan basis. We got a hint of that from the Senate Finance Committee's report last Friday, where they did confirm her unanimously in a 26 to 0 vote.

Now, what's very interesting about all this is that as we head into that final vote, which should be scheduled for around 5:30 tonight is what the Senate is saying, whether or not she'll be able to keep that sort of bipartisan support as she tries to sell Congress on that $1.9 trillion Biden stimulus plan that the administration had unveiled just before inauguration. Now of course, that's going to be very challenging, because you have a number of Republicans that are kind of scared by how large that price tag is at $1.9 trillion.

But for Yellen's part, told the Senate Finance Committee in her hearing that she thinks that while it's important to pay mind to the national debt and the types of, I guess, burden that come with these large packages, that her main priority from an economic standpoint is making sure that these households and businesses have a bridge to the post-pandemic economy, especially as that vaccination continues to roll out. That will be her main focus once she is confirmed, again, expected to happen at around 5:30 tonight.