{"id":11535,"date":"2025-07-21T21:01:59","date_gmt":"2025-07-21T21:01:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/thune-backs-scrutiny-of-fed-hq-renovations\/"},"modified":"2025-07-21T21:01:59","modified_gmt":"2025-07-21T21:01:59","slug":"thune-backs-scrutiny-of-fed-hq-renovations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/thune-backs-scrutiny-of-fed-hq-renovations\/","title":{"rendered":"Thune backs scrutiny of Fed HQ renovations"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Senate Majority Leader <a href=\"https:\/\/directory.politicopro.com\/member\/51242\" data-person-id=\"51242\">John Thune<\/a> on Monday said the Federal Reserve should remain politically independent but called for oversight of the central bank\u2019s expensive headquarter renovations.<\/p>\n<p>In comments to reporters, Thune said he didn\u2019t know whether Fed Chair Jerome Powell could be fired over his management of the building upgrades, where costs have ballooned to $2.5 billion, but said when it comes to interest rates, the Fed is historically shielded from politics.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat agency is supposed to be independent and operate sort of outside the whims of the political process,\u201d he said. \u201cSo that seems to be kind of where \u2014 not notwithstanding the president obviously has an opinion about this \u2014 but that seems to be where he\u2019s landing in terms of what he may or may not do.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As for the headquarter renovations, the Republican leader said the issue \u201crequires and demands some amount of oversight.\u201d White House Budget Director Russell Vought has been digging into the costs of the project, and Powell has also asked the Fed\u2019s inspector general to look into it.<\/p>\n<p>The central bank is self-funded, but its profits are given to the U.S. Treasury annually.<\/p>\n<p>Thune\u2019s remarks come as Trump and his administration have been escalating their attacks on Powell, who has held interest rates steady this year despite vehement calls from the president for lower borrowing costs. The Fed chief has said he is waiting to see how tariffs feed through to the economy before making any policy moves, though he expects to cut rates sometime later this year.<\/p>\n<p>The senator said he met with Trump today but they did not discuss Powell.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Senate Majority Leader John Thune on Monday said the Federal Reserve should remain politically independent but called for oversight of the central bank\u2019s expensive headquarter renovations. In comments to reporters, Thune said he didn\u2019t know whether Fed Chair Jerome Powell could be fired over his management of the building upgrades, where costs have ballooned to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11535","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11535"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11535\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}