Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen, who has voiced concern over proposals to increase congressional influence over U.S. monetary policy, will meet with the powerful chairman of the Senate Banking Committee on Tuesday.
"I'll see Yellen this afternoon. She's coming to my office," at 5 p.m., Alabama Republican Richard Shelby told reporters in Washington. He said that Yellen had requested the meeting. Fed spokesman Joe Pavel declined to comment.
The Fed is under pressure from both parties in Congress to be more transparent and accountable. Republicans are unhappy with aggressive monetary policies that have pumped its balance sheet up to a record $4.5 trillion and what they see as regulatory overreach. Democrats have chided the New York Fed for being too close to the big Wall Street banks it supervises.
"We'll continue to be engaged," Shelby said. "What we are doing is trying to figure out exactly what we need to do legislatively to make the Fed more accountable to the people and to do a better job as a regulator."
Yellen, who met with Senate Democrats in January, was criticized by Republican lawmakers during congressional testimony last month for what they said was political bias toward the priorities of President Barack Obama's White House.
Yellen rejected the accusation during sometimes heated exchanges before the House Financial Services Committee that underlined the current poor state of relations between the Fed and its congressional overseers.
She also pushed back hard against a proposal from Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul, a potential 2016 presidential contender, to "Audit the Fed," which the central bank says would politicize monetary policy and harm the U.S. economy.
Shelby has said that he wants to work with Democrats to fashion bipartisan legislation on the Fed. He has also voiced interest in a proposal from Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher to adjust the balance of power on the policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee.
Fisher's plan would, among other things, strip the New York Fed of its permanent vote on the FOMC in favor of an equal vote rotation among all 12 reserve banks. Currently, the 11 other regional bank heads rotate into voting seats on the FOMC, with Chicago and Cleveland voting every other year and the rest every third year.
