Several prominent congressional Democrats led a group urging the Federal Reserve to stop rate hikes to avoid endangering the economy, CNBC reported Wednesday.
The group sent a letter on Monday before the Fed's announcement Wednesday that, as expected, it raised rates in an effort to slow inflation. It was the Fed's 10th rate hike since March 2022.
The group is spearheaded by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., Rep. Brendan Boyle, D-Pa., and seven other lawmakers.
In the letter, the group expressed worry over the Fed's monetary policy and its "potential to throw millions of Americans out of work" and urged it to suspend rate hikes in order to "respect" its dual mandate and "avoid engineering a recession that destroys jobs and crushes small businesses."
The group said in the letter that "while we do not question the Fed's policy independence, we believe that continuing to raise interest rates would be an abandonment of the Fed's dual mandate to achieve both maximum employment and price stability and show little regard for the small businesses and working families that will get caught in the wreckage."
The lawmakers cited the lowest year-over-year consumer price index in nine months, a resilient labor market, and a 3.5% unemployment rate as proof that more rate hikes are not needed and would "needlessly" threaten the progress.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell said in February that he continues to think "that there's a path to getting inflation back down to 2% without a really significant economic decline or a significant increase in unemployment," although he also pointed out that most economic experts would predict an uptick, CNBC reported.
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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