The battle now is shifting to a special Congressional committee that will negotiate the details of those cuts. President Obama plans to deliver a speech after Labor Day detailing proposals for job creation and spending cuts intended to influence the work of that committee.

On Capitol Hill, Democrats seized on the Fed chairman’s remarks to criticize Republicans for what they described as intransigence during the debt ceiling negotiations.

Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the Democratic whip, said in a statement, “I believe that Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke was correct today when he observed that partisan brinksmanship over the debt limit damaged financial markets and the American economy.”

The White House, while declining to address Mr. Bernanke’s remarks specifically, chimed in. “The president has repeatedly expressed in his own right his frustration with the dysfunction and the partisan rancor that we’ve seen on Capitol Hill that has interfered with the government’s ability to address these challenges,” said Josh Earnest, a White House spokesman.

Republicans, however, offered little response. And market reaction was muted. Stocks fell in early trading, then gradually recovered. The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index rose 1.5 percent and the Dow Jones industrial average rose 1.2 percent to close at 11,284.54. Friday’s speech was eagerly anticipated because Mr. Bernanke and his predecessors have made a habit of coming to this conference, hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, to clarify their views on the economy and monetary policy.

The Fed announced earlier this month that it intended to hold short-term interest rates near zero until at least the middle of 2013, a reflection of its forecast that growth will not be fast enough during that period to drive up wages and prices. Many investors had viewed that announcement as a potential prelude to further steps. More than 25 million Americans cannot find full-time jobs, and the government said Friday that the economy expanded at an annual pace of 0.7 percent during the first half of the year, down from an earlier estimate of 0.8 percent.

But Mr. Bernanke, while noting those economic challenges, returned to the language of speeches he gave earlier this year, arguing that the Fed had largely exhausted the power of its monetary policy. “Most of the economic policies that support robust economic growth in the long run are outside the province of the central bank,” he said.