Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke tempered expectations the Fed will resume buying bonds as criticism from Republican senators highlighted the potential backlash to additional monetary stimulus.

“We're not proposing anything today,” Bernanke said to the Senate Banking Committee yesterday in Washington. “We just want to make sure that we have the options when they become necessary. But at this point, we're not proposing to undertake that option,” he said, referring to a third round of quantitative easing, or QE3.

Bernanke appeared for semi-annual congressional testimony the week after the government reported that the jobless rate rose to 9.2 percent last month, with 14.1 million Americans unemployed. The Fed has held its target interest rate near zero for more than 30 months and expanded its balance sheet to a record $2.88 trillion through two rounds of large-scale asset purchases. Policy makers now are waiting to see whether the economy strengthens before changing their stance, Bernanke said.