[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 7]
[House]
[Pages 9913-9914]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            FEDERAL RESERVE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Georgia (Mr. Woodall) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I have the Federal Reserve on my mind this 
morning.
  You can't really get through the Federal Reserve in 5 minutes, Mr. 
Speaker, but I wanted to start down the road today because I saw a 
headline Bloomberg reported to say that what had been intended to be 
the beginning of an unwinding of a Federal Reserve balance sheet wasn't 
going to occur in the timely fashion that had been intended. This was 
news to me, based on what we have seen in the Budget Committee.
  I have with me this morning the Federal Reserve Act authorization. 
Folks often wonder where the Federal Reserve comes from. The truth is 
it comes from the Federal Reserve Act.
  I point to section 2A, ``Monetary policy objectives.'' Its says that:

       The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve and the Open 
     Market Committee shall maintain long-run growth of the 
     monetary and credit aggregates commensurate with the 
     economy's long-run potential to increase production, so as to 
     promote effectively the goals of maximum employment, stable 
     prices, and moderate long-term interest rates.

  Now, I know there are some high school economic students out there 
who are thinking: Hey, wait a minute. Can you really promote stable 
prices, maximum employment, and moderate long-term interest rates with 
the same set of policies?
  I share that high school economics concern about whether or not those 
three goals can be pursued collectively, but this is the mandate the 
Federal Reserve has, and this is why the Federal Reserve is involved in 
what they are involved in.
  Now, Mr. Speaker, what I have here is the Federal Reserve balance 
sheet. It goes back to 2007, back when the Federal Reserve balance 
sheet was relatively stable. By stable, I mean it was at about $800 
billion--$800 billion, the balance sheet of the Federal Reserve.
  I want you to watch on the chart as we go out through these stable 
times, right up until the balance sheet triples in 2008. Now, when we 
are trying to promote economic stability, the tripling of any 
government balance sheet should be of concern. The Federal Reserve 
balance sheet triples in 2008.
  Mr. Speaker, I hold in my hand a hearing transcript from my very 
first month on the Budget Committee. That occurred 3 years ago. It was 
2011, and Chairman Paul Ryan was questioning Ben Bernanke, then the 
Federal Reserve chairman.
  Chairman Ryan said, ``I want to talk to you about QE2''--quantitative 
easing 2--and what it is doing to the American economy.
  Chairman Bernanke's response was this, Mr. Speaker. He said:

       What we are doing here is a temporary measure which will be 
     reversed, so that at the end of this process, the money 
     supply will be normalized, the amount of the Fed's balance 
     sheet will be normalized, and there will be no permanent 
     increase, either in money outstanding, in the Fed's balance 
     sheet, or in inflation.

  That was February 2011. I point to February 2011 on my chart here, 
Mr. Speaker, where the Federal Reserve chairman said that the balance 
sheet would begin to normalize.
  What I want you to observe in the intervening months between February 
2011, when normalization was discussed and projected, we have actually 
seen the balance sheet increase almost 100 percent. Today, we are met 
with the news that a return to a normalized balance sheet may be 
delayed even further.

[[Page 9914]]

  Mr. Speaker, these are decisions on which no Member of this Chamber 
votes. These are decisions on which no member of America's board of 
directors--being the American voters--have a voice, and this is a 
decision that will either rescue or destroy the economic future of this 
country.
  It needs to be discussed more often, Mr. Speaker. I intend to bring 
these issues to the floor on a regular basis. No harm will come from 
shining the bright light of transparency on these Federal Reserve 
decisions. No harm will come from incorporating 330 million Americans 
into this debate about America's economic security.

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