(Bloomberg) -- Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis President James Bullard said he dissented at this week’s meeting because he wanted the U.S. central bank to implement a balance-sheet reduction plan -- in addition to a half percentage-point hike -- adding that he favors raising rates more sharply this year than any of his colleagues.

“I recommended that the committee try to achieve a level of the policy rate above 3% this year. This would quickly adjust the policy rate to a more appropriate level for the current circumstances,” Bullard said in a statement Friday. “In my view, raising the target range to 0.50% to 0.75% and implementing a plan for reducing the size of the Fed’s balance sheet would have been more appropriate actions,” for this week’s meeting.

Federal Open Market Committee policy makers led by Chair Jerome Powell voted 8-1 on Wednesday to raise interest rates by a quarter point for the first increase since 2018 as they confront the highest inflation in four decades. The increase took the target range for their benchmark policy rate to 0.25% to 0.5%.

Bullard’s dissent in favor of a half-point hike was the first vote against a decision since September 2020.

“The combination of strong real economic performance and unexpectedly high inflation means that the committee’s policy rate is currently far too low to prudently manage the U.S. macroeconomic situation,” Bullard said. “The committee will have to move quickly to address this situation or risk losing credibility on its inflation target.”

Other policy makers are expected to weigh in later on Friday, including Governor Christopher Waller, who is interviewed on CNBC at 8:45 a.m. New York time, as well as Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari at noon and Richmond Fed chief Thomas Barkin at 1 p.m. Powell gives a speech on Monday.

The FOMC’s “dot plot” in its economic forecasts showed policy makers penciling in their expectation of rate hikes through each of the remaining six meetings in 2022, with the median projection for a quarter point every time. With almost half of policy makers seeking to go even faster, that would imply a half-point move at some time during the year.

Bullard’s statement reveals that he had the highest forecast for rates this year and owns the lone dot above 3% in the chart.

“U.S. monetary policy has been unwittingly easing further because inflation has risen sharply while the policy rate has remained very low, pushing short-term real interest rates lower,” Bullard said. 

The Fed last raised rates by a half point in 2000. Officials next meet May 3-4.

Bullard’s statement represented an escalation in his view for the need for aggressive hiking. The St. Louis Fed leader in February had called for raising rates 1 percentage point by July 1, shrinking the Fed’s balance sheet starting in the second quarter, and then deciding on the path of rates in the second half based on updated data.

Bullard, 61, president of the St. Louis bank since 2008, has sometimes been viewed as a bellwether for the FOMC and was the first to push for an early end of asset purchases started during the Covid-19 economic downturn, with the committee over time swinging around to his point of view. He was also the first to push for a second round of asset purchases coming out of the 2007-2009 recession. The committee eventually adopted that.

(Updates with details of other speakers on Friday in sixth paragraph.)

©2022 Bloomberg L.P.