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Just a few blocks from our studio here in Washington is another series of meetings that the President is sure to comment on. The FLMC, kicking off its two day policy session, expected to hold interest rates steady tomorrow, even in the face of growing pressure President Trump is putting onto the Fed, particularly the Fed's chair Jerome Powell. And joining us live here on Balance of Power on Bloomberg
TV and Radio. On that and much more, is Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, the ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee. Senator, welcome back. We appreciate you joining us as we look ahead to the decision tomorrow. Knowing the next opportunity the Fed would have to cut rates is in September. What would the economic consequence be if they wait that long?
Well, look, I.
Want to see interest rates come down, because when interest rates stay high, families pay more on their credit cards, they pay more on their car loans, Mortgage rates stay higher, and that's a problem. Is exactly one person who is responsible for keeping those interest rates high, and that's Donald Trump. Jerome Powell said last month that he would have urged
the FED to lower interest rates last February. But for the chaos that Donald Trump has been causing over tariffs and the kind of fallout that that's going to create in the economy. So if Donald Trump really wants to see interest rates come down, then stop creating so much chaos around tariffs. And I hope the FED could get it done.
That said Senator, realizing you prefer lower interest rates. Does J. Powell deserve some credit for holding steady in the face of this pressure from President Trump.
Look now it's like an upside down the world. I want to see Fed Chair Powell lower interest rates. I think that's good for families. I think it's the right thing to do in the economy. But I also want to see an independent FED. And when Donald Trump simply tries to persuade, he says, here are the arguments in favor, here's why I think you should do it. I get that.
But when he threatens to fire Powell, when he blows up this whole pretext of trying to fire him for cause, when he does that kind of thing, now he threatens the independence of the FED. And there's a real cost of that, not for Jerome Powell personally, but a real
cost for our economy. We have built much of our economic foundation on the notion that the FED makes its decisions independent of political pressure, and that they are a group of people who are economically informed, follow the data, and they make those decisions on monetary policy based on what they think the data are telling them about inflation and jobs. And when Donald Trump blows through all that, he undermines confidence in the FED and in our entire financial system. That's a real problem.
Well.
Of course, part of what President Trump and others in the administration argue is that at the FED lowers interest rates, it will help to ease the issue we have in this country with housing in particular, at least on the interest rates side. But I know you and your colleagues in the Banking Committee are also trying to do things
about that on the supply side. Is the measure you co sponsored with Chairman Scott, the Renewing Opportunity in the American Dream to Housing Act, passed unanimously through a committee, quite the bipartisan feat in today's political environment. Senator, my question is when we look at the contents of that bill, knowing that part of it is asking hud to establish new things like loan and grant programs for qualified homeowners or landlords, knowing at the same time the administration is
actually trying to reduce HUD as we speak. Do these things run into conflict with each other? Can both be done at the same time?
So if I can let me back out just a tiny little bit, we have a housing crisis in America. Prices are up, and for decades now, officials have just stood by policymakers and said, wow, prices just keep going up. That's a real problem. The real problem is we don't have in US housing. It is a supply problem. So what we have done with this bill is that we are pushing toward more supply. We need about seven million
more housing units in America. This bill has twenty nine different provisions to it that mostly all row in the same direction. Some involve HUD, and many of them do not involve HUD. But the whole point here is to put the federal government in the position of saying it is a matter of federal policy that we want to
encourage more housing development. We want more of it in Massachusetts, in South Carolina, we want more of it out west, down South, up north, we want it in urban areas in rural areas, and every member of the committee, all twenty four of us, have provisions in there to help make that happen. Yes, we need a functional HUD to help on parts of that, but I do want to underline here some of the provisions in this bill are about cutting red tape and slimming down some of the
programs that HUD works on. Other parts are about we're gonna give some trial runs to some ideas and try a few things that haven't been tried before. We even have an innovation fund in this for cities and towns that are trying to build more housing. There are a lot of good ideas in this bill because the housing problem we have right now wasn't caused by one thing going wrong. It was caused by a lot of things going wrong. So it's going to take a lot of
things to help fix it. And I'm excited say it again. It was bipartisan unanimous in the United States Senate. That's pretty amazing.
Well, it is duly noted unanimously passed out of committee. That means every Democrat and Republican voted for this, suggesting there could be some momentum on the floor if we get that far Senator, there are a lot of questions about the interference that you could bump into when lawmakers returned to town following the August recess, assuming you get there.
One of those distractions is the Jeffrey Epstein story. And I have to ask you about this, not that we're featuring this in our interviews, but it is apparently impacting the agenda. House lawmakers went home early because of this. The President of the United States has been talking about, or certainly asked about, a pardon repeatedly when it comes to Gallaine Maxwell, and I'd like for you to hear what he's said about this most recently and well asked you about it. Here's President Trump.
High a pardon for Klain Maxwell, who landed?
Is that something you would ever consider.
A pardon for who?
For Kalay Maxwell?
Well, I'm allowed to give her a pardon, but nobody's approached me with it, nobody's ask me about it. And by the way, I never went to the island. I never had the privilege of going to his island, and I did turn it down. I don't know what we're calling a privilege here, Senator, but I'm just wondering your thoughts on this What do you think is more likely, Gallainne Maxwell testifying before Congress or getting a pardon from Donald Trump.
I don't know what's more likely, and I'm not good at anticipating this, but I just want to be clear. The only way that this thing resolves itself is to be completely transparent. Put out all of the records, all the testimony, whatever it is that she has told the lawyers down in Florida just earlier in the week. Get all that information out there, Let everybody look at it, and let people evaluate what they think is true, what they think is not true, what they think is credible.
But this idea of holding back information and kind of sorting through it a little piece here and a little piece there, well, I gotta tell you that is keeping everybody in churn over on the Republican side, sucking up a lot of oxygen, oxygen that we could be using to do things like work on a housing bill to bring down the cost of housing for every family across this country.
Well, Congress pushed these files out in September, when everybody's.
Back, Well, the House has already moved in that direction. If we need to. We have raised the issue now in the Senate. Yeah, Look, this is one of the things that Congress does. It's part of our oversight, and that is to say, when it's time to make these records public, let everybody see what's in the whole file. Because there have been a lot of contradictory statements here. Remember it was the Attorney General of the United States who says at one point is that she has the
Epstein files on her desk. She's talking about backing up what was it, a truckload of documents and files, and then turns around and says, nothing to see here. Well, you know that doesn't have much credibility for anyone. I think the only way out of this mess is just to be totally transparent. Just put it all out there, let the American people sort through it. You know, Americans are pretty smart and they'll figure out what it is that's happened if they can see all of the pieces together.
Well, I'm glad we could talk about all of these issues today. Senator, welcome back. Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, ranking member, Senate Banking Committee. We thank you, as always