Hearing is two hours and 40 minutes. [inaudible conversations] good morning. The Commerce Science and Technology Transportation Committee will come to order. I want to welcome all our witnesses for joining us today. Today is a very important hearing date. We are going to be joined by obviously welcoming back our colleague and former colleagues, Senator Nelson and his position to be nominated as nasa director, and former Colleague Senator Hutchison who i think is going to join us virtually. So, can think of two more active members, ranking member on the committee, so we certainly welcome them. And certainly, we have our former Commerce Secretary who is going to be joining us virtually. So, it is a very big commerce a day for those of us in the Commerce Family and longstanding members of the committee to see our colleagues and people weve worked with on so many policy issues and obviously a lot of enthusiasm by members who want to join in and support the nominations and we will be joined
thank you very much. good morning. thanks to all of you for joining us and to all our colleagues for participating this morning. as you are well aware that every part we are in the midst of a public health and economic catastrophe. the coronavirus pandemic has resulted in the loss of more than 150,000 american lives, more than 4.8 million infections in the sharpest economic downturn since the great depression. the latest projection from the cdc anticipates an average of nearly 1000 deaths per day through august 22. that is 18000 americans who will die over just two and half weeks. since march my colleagues and i have conducted oversight over the trump administration s response to this crisis to ensure it is efficient, effective and equitable. our goal is clear, to save americans lives and livelihoods. our message to the administration is simple, it is urgent that we put policies and politics aside and work together on behalf of the american people. at this time of national
overarching goal, to sustain expansion for the benefit of the american people. at the fomc meeting that included today, we maintained our policy interest rate but made significant changes to our statement. since the beginning of the year, we have judged our policy stance was probably appropriate and we should be patient in assessing the need for changes. in light of increased uncertainties and muted inflation pressures, we emphasize the committee will monitor the implications of incoming information for the economic outlook and will act as appropriate to sustain the expansion with a strong labor market and inflation near its 2% objective. step back andke a review how the changing economic and financial picture brings us to today s decision. so far this year, the economy has performed reasonably well with solid fundamentals supporting continued growth and strong employment. runningn has been somewhat below our objective that we have expected it to pick up supported by solid gr
given uncertainties and muted inflation pressures, we will closely monitor incoming information for the economic outlook and will act as appropriate to sustain the expansion with a strong labor market and inflation near its 2% objective. i would like to take a step back and review how the changing economic and financial picture brings us to today s decision. so far this year, the economy has performed reasonably well with solid fundamentals supporting continued growth and strong employment. inflation has been running somewhat below our objective but we expect it to pick up, supported by solid growth and a strong job market. along with this stable picture, this favorable picture we , have been mindful of some ongoing crosscurrents, including trade development and concerns about global growth. at the time of our last fomc meeting, which ended on may 1, there was tentative evidence that these cross currents were moderating. the latest data was encouraging from china and europe
because we re really 10 years deep in this almost 10 years in this expansion, and inflation is still kind of i d say not clearly meeting our target, so that s one of the reasons why we re being patient. as i ve said before, i think inflation that is a little bit below our target, particularly headline inflation this year, will be meaningfully below our target for most of the year because of lower oil prices, but we project that core will be too that gives us the ability to be patient, and not move until we see that our target goals are being achieved. i just wanted to press a little bit about what is the story of the committee when you get in the discussion today, and yesterday, about inflation, what kind of is the story that emerges? so there are a bunch of different stories there s no real easy answer. would be is just that the natural rate of unemployment is lower than people think that there s still more slack in the economy. another is that expectations play, inflati