Can the Fed stay independent in a polarized era? (Philip A. Wallach, Brookings)

My Brookings colleague Sarah Binder and her coauthor Mark Spindel have an important new paperout today: “Independence and accountability: Congress and the Fed in a polarized era.” They ask who in Congress seeks to alter the Fed’s structure or responsibilities and when they do it. They provide answers backed up by an impressive new dataset encompassing 879 bills introduced by 333 lawmakers in the House and Senate between 1947 and 2014 that address the power, structure, and governance of the Federal Reserve.

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Philip Wallach is a senior fellow in Governance Studies. He writes on a wide variety of domestic policy topics, including climate change, regulatory reform, the debt ceiling, and marijuana legalization.