Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX), chairman of the Congressional Joint Economic Committee, released the following statement on today’s decision of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) to reduce its purchases of agency mortgage-backed securities to $5 billion per month and reduce its purchases of longer-term Treasury securities to $10 billion per month.

“While I would have preferred a bolder move, I applaud the Federal Reserve’s decision today to continue tapering of its asset purchases and lay the groundwork for beginning to normalize interest rates – hopefully sooner rather than later. I am particularly pleased by the Fed’s expressed intention to exit the credit allocation business.”

“Easy money and artificially low interest rates have not and will not ease the economic stress that hard-working, middle class taxpayers face as a result of the weakest economic recovery during the last half-century. We need rapid economic growth to take this nation forward.”

“Now that the Federal Reserve has taken this important step, President Obama and Congressional Democrats must demonstrate a willingness to work with Congressional Republicans to (1) enact a bipartisan pro-growth tax reform that incentivizes businesses to invest and create jobs in the United States; (2) streamline and eliminate where possible regulations that add unnecessary costs on businesses and consumers; and (3) do all we can to speed up the production of domestic energy resources. They can help jumpstart the latter by immediately approving construction of the Keystone-XL pipeline.”

“The Federal Reserve continues to take modest but important steps. It is past time for the President and Congressional Democrats to do theirs.”