U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan today told a U.S. Congressional committee that “employment will begin to increase more quickly before long,” and that erecting protective trade barriers was not the answer stem the loss of U.S. jobs to foreign competition.

Greenspan made his remarks in testimony before the House Education and the Workforce Committee

He said raising trade barriers to keep foreign goods out of the country would remove the pressure for U.S. companies to become more competitive and push America’s standard of living lower.

He also repeated his warning that Congress will have to trim future Social Security benefits to address the pending retirement of 77 million baby boomers.

Greenspan said the U.S. government cannot afford to meet all the promises in Social Security and Medicare that have been made to future retirees.

“We do not have enough in real resources to meet the promises that have already been made. We will not be able to fully meet the benefits to the next generation, the baby boomers that are retiring,” Greenspan said.

Greenspan’s comments about the need to trim retirement benefits provoked criticism when he made them last month.

Greenspan told the committee he believed some tax increases would be needed to bolster Social Security because the funding gap was so large that it could not be closed entirely by trimming benefits. But he said Congress should start with benefit reductions before moving to tax increases because higher taxes would act as a drag on economic growth.