Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell told lawmakers on Wednesday that the central bank will release a proposal on the Supplementary Leverage Ratio for public comment later today, marking the next step in the Fed’s review of bank-capital rules. Powell said the Fed remains committed to an "ample reserves" framework that emerged after the global financial crisis, arguing that plentiful reserves help banks continue lending during periods of stress. He added that reverting to a scarce-reserves system would not meaningfully cut costs and that shrinking reserves to pre-crisis levels would take years. The chair agreed that adjusting the SLR could free up capital for banks to invest in Treasuries and other low-risk assets and said he is "pretty confident" the Fed will act on both the Basel III endgame and SLR "in the near future." He also cautioned against eliminating the Fed’s authority to pay interest on reserves, calling it essential to the central bank’s interest-rate control toolkit.