The rate debate inside the Federal Reserve is intensifying as policy makers go public with their views about the path ahead for monetary policy.

On Thursday, Chicago Fed president Austan Goolsbee and Kansas City Fed president Jeff Schmid both expressed discomfort with aggressively cutting rates further due to concerns about inflation.

At the same time, new Fed governor Stephen Miran continued with his public campaign to push more rapid cuts. He argued in a Bloomberg interview that the current level of 4% to 4.25% is highly restrictive and poses a risk to the US economy.

“That’s why it’s so important to start adjusting more quickly, rather than less quickly,” Miran said Thursday in an interview on Fox Business.

“When monetary policy is in that restrictive a stance, the economy becomes more vulnerable to downside shocks. In my mind, there’s not really a need to be running that type of risk.”

Fed policymakers last week cut rates by a quarter point and offered a median estimate of two more cuts in 2025, although there was widespread divergence among the individual policymakers. Miran dissented, preferring that the cut be bigger.

Goolsbee and Schmid on Thursday sounded more worried that rapid cuts could pose a risk to getting inflation fully under control.

Speaking at a breakfast in Grand Rapids, Mich., Goolsbee said he’s “somewhat uneasy with front loading too many rate cuts based on the just on the payroll jobs numbers slowing down.”

“If we are in this environment where inflation's been above the 2% target for almost 5 years in a row now, and it's going the wrong way, just counting on the inflation to be transitory makes me uneasy,” said Gooslbee.

If data show the US economy is on the path to maintaining stable full employment and inflation is likely to be coming back down to 2%, he added, then rates can go down a fair bit more from where they are even now.

But Goolsbee noted that the current environment shows evidence of stagflationary direction shocks, saying that’s the “worst scenario” the Fed can be in now as it tryes to balance which side of its dual mandate is getting worse quickly.

Schmid, who is a voting member of the committee that makes the final call on rates, said he supported lowering rates last week as a risk management move.

While he was more concerned that inflation was sticky and headed towards 3% than 2%, the recent weak job market data convinced him the job market may be weakening more “substantially or abruptly” than he anticipated.

“That said, my view is that inflation remains too high while the labor market, though cooling, still remains largely in balance. I view the current stance of policy as only slightly restrictive, which I think is the right place to be,” Schmid said in his speech.

Schmid said he would take a “data-dependent approach to any further adjustments in the policy rate.”

Despite some of this caution, there are others within the Fed who do sound more open to more reductions in the near term

San Francisco Fed president Mary Daly on Tuesday said said it’s “likely” more interest rate cuts will be needed and that she “fully supported” the decision to lower rates by a quarter percentage point last week.

“Moving forward, it is likely that further policy adjustments will be needed as we work to restore price stability while providing needed support to the labor market," she added.

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