Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX), chairman of the congressional Joint Economic Committee, today applauded the decision by the Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) to continue tapering its large-scale asset purchase program by reducing its purchase of long-term Treasury securities by $5 billion and reducing its purchase of agency mortgage-backed securities by $5 billion.

“I am glad the FOMC is continuing to taper quantitative easing. Nevertheless, the Fed’s inflated balance sheet is still growing along with the risk for higher price inflation in the future. The Fed should begin now to normalize monetary policy to maintain the long-term purchasing power of the U.S. dollar.”

“The purchasing power of the dollar has declined by nearly 10 percent since the recession ended, while on Wall Street the real value of stocks has more than doubled.”

“If inflation were to get going, the Fed would have to slam the brakes and push our economy back into a recession to get inflation back under control. That’s not a risk we should take with a still fragile economy,” Brady concluded.