Press Releases

Today, the House Financial Services Committee, led by Chairman French Hill (AR-02), is holding a Full Committee hearing featuring testimony from Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh on the agency's Semi-Annual Monetary Policy Report.

Read Chairman Hill's remarks as prepared for delivery:

"I want to welcome our witness, the Honorable Kevin Warsh, to his first appearance before Congress as Chairman of the Federal Reserve.

"Annual inflation is still running above the Fed's 2 percent target.

"One need only recall the bitter experience of double-dip inflation in the 1970s and 1980s, and the actions that Chairman Paul Volcker was forced to take to defeat it, to know why this second surge needs to be stopped. 

"There is no more punishing tax on American industry or our hardworking, innovative citizens than inflation. 

"In its first statement under your leadership, the FOMC said that it “will deliver price stability.” Congress expects the Fed to remain focused on that mission and keep at it until price stability is achieved.

"Today, we face the consequences of the Fed’s past choices.

"In August 2020, the Fed adopted a flexible average inflation targeting framework in which it decided to allow inflation to run “moderately above 2 percent for some time” after periods in which it had been “running persistently below 2 percent.”

"This framework, combined with irresponsible fiscal policy and a slow response to the inflation that began in March 2021, led to an inflationary surge the likes of which had not been seen since the 1980s.

"In 2025, the Fed wisely abandoned its flexible average inflation targeting framework.

"Going back further, today we also face the consequences of the Fed’s experiments with large-scale purchases of Treasuries and agency mortgage-backed securities, better known as “quantitative easing” or QE.

"Though perhaps justified in its first round during the immediate onset of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. Long past the crisis, the Fed repeatedly expanded QE, with the costs of each successive round of QE higher and its benefits lower.

"While emergency facilities and QE were resurrected in early 2020 in response to unknown economic and social ramifications of the COVID-19 pandemic, they were not ended and promptly phased out. 

"The result of these decisions was a Fed that held a quarter of federal debt in 2022. Though that share has decreased, it still creates incentives for fiscal policymakers to avoid tough decisions on debt and deficits today and leave the consequences to our children and grandchildren.

"You said recently that 'inflation is a choice.' I want to echo this and say that debt and deficits are also a choice. Congress chooses unrestrained deficits and out-of-control debt, and has repeatedly drafted the Fed into being its enabler. Both need to stop.

"Turning to the Fed’s regulatory and supervisory policy: in the recent past, the Fed has engaged in mission creep resulting from political capture by partisan actors attempting to accomplish policies through the Fed on which they cannot build consensus and pass through Congress.

"From crusades against digital assets to trying to make the Fed a climate regulator, these decisions took the Fed far beyond the boundaries of what Congress has authorized in statute.

"It is not the Fed’s role to make decisions for the American people on major questions of vast political and economic significance. That is Congress’ duty.

"The Fed needs to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past and reform itself to guard its long-term monetary policy independence and to restore the reputation of the Fed as an apolitical agent carrying out Congress’ statutory directives.

"Reform is not intended to be punitive. Rather, reform is the mechanism by which the Fed can become the best version of itself for the American People.

"Thank you for joining us today, Chairman Warsh. I look forward to your testimony.

"I yield back."

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