On Capitol Hill, members of Congress are grilling Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, about his attempts to lift economic growth by reducing long-term interest rates — the Fed’s so-called Q.E.2 program, or quantitative easing. Some members of Congress think Mr. Bernanke is fighting the wrong battle. They want him to take steps to stamp out inflation, which they believe is dangerously high or soon will be.

Here is core inflation — economists’ preferred measure of inflation, because it’s more predictive than headline inflation — over the last 40 years:

Does it look dangerously high?

Or might the slow pace of economic growth and the high level of unemployment be larger problems?