Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

24. Federal Reserve · Major · Needs Congress

Limit the Federal Reserve's mandate to the sole objective of stable money

Not started

732 24. Federal Reserve

“To protect the Federal Reserve’s independence and to improve monetary policy outcomes, Congress should limit its mandate to the sole objective of stable money.”

Printed twice more in the same chapter.

732 24. Federal Reserve

“Eliminate the “dual mandate.” The Federal Reserve was originally created to “furnish an elastic currency” and rediscount commercial paper so that the supply of credit could increase along with the demand for money and bank credit.”

740 24. Federal Reserve

“Eliminate “full employment” from the Fed’s mandate, requiring it to focus on price stability alone.”

What has happened

  1. Not started

    The Federal Reserve's statutory mandate at 12 U.S.C. 225a still reads "maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates." The Price Stability Act of 2026 (H.R. 5396) would strike "maximum employment," and the House Financial Services Committee ordered it reported 30-21 on 2026-05-13 and placed it on the Union Calendar on 2026-06-24 (H. Rept. 119-710) — but the House has not voted on it and the Senate has no companion. Under playbook §3b, committee action — ordered reported, marked up, or placed on a calendar — is not a rung on the Requires-Congress ladder: thousands of bills are reported and never voted, so the Status stays not-started until a chamber passes the bill.

    No action found yet. This entry is the starting point, not a finding.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

Searched 2026-08-27; the queries are in docs/research/ch-24.md. The ask is one Congress has taken up but not carried out.

  • Price Stability Act of 2026, H.R. 5396 (Rep. French Hill), introduced 2025-09-16. Section 2, “Removal of Dual Mandate,” amends section 2A of the Federal Reserve Act (12 U.S.C. 225a) by “striking maximum employment, stable prices,' and inserting stable prices’” — exactly this ask. Reported (amended) by the Committee on Financial Services 2026-06-24, H. Rept. 119-710, Union Calendar No. 616; ordered reported by recorded vote 30-21 on 2026-05-13. The reported text is at https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/BILLS-119hr5396rh/html/BILLS-119hr5396rh.htm (loaded 2026-08-27). It is recorded here rather than as Evidence because committee action is not passage by a chamber; if the House passes it, this becomes an attempted event dated to the vote.
  • No executive action bears on the mandate: the Federal Register carries no presidential document about the Federal Reserve’s objectives in the window, and full-text searches for “dual mandate” and “maximum employment” return nothing relevant.
  • Merged 2026-08-27 (lower-tiers ticket 01). #2008 (“Eliminate the ‘dual mandate’”, p. 732) and #2023 (“Eliminate ‘full employment’ from the Fed’s mandate”, p. 740) were folded into this Recommendation and their files deleted. All three were one ask in three phrasings, answered by one instrument (H.R. 5396) — the test playbook §3b now applies: would a single instrument satisfy all of them at once? Their Quotes are carried above as citations, so nothing is lost from Proof; what changes is that Chapter 24’s Roll-up now counts the ask once instead of three times.
Action
restrict
Object
Federal Reserve statutory mandate
ID
2007