House GOP budget chief calls Fed’s $600B plan a 'big mistake'

Paul Ryan, the incoming chairman of the House Budget Committee, has called the Federal Reserve’s plan to pump $600 billion into the economy a “big mistake.”

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke moved Wednesday to pour $600 billion into the banking system in an effort to speed up what the Fed has called a “disappointingly slow” national economic recovery.

Ryan, a Republican from Wisconsin, panned the decision during an interview on "Fox News Sunday." He is the ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee and will take over as chairman in January.

“It’s a big mistake, in my opinion,” he said. “Look, we have Congress doing tax and spend, borrow and spend. Now we have the Federal Reserve doing print and spend.”

Ryan warned “this is going to give us an inflation problem in the future” and “an interest-rate problem in the future.”

Ryan said the Fed should focus on “keeping our money sound and honest.” Instead, Ryan charged, the action could lead to a “big inflation problem down the road.”

But Bernanke and some other leading economists are more concerned about the prospect of deflation, a phenomenon that has plagued the Japanese economy in recent years.