WASHINGTON, D.C. (CNN/Money) - So Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan may be on the hot seat today as he faces the Senate Banking Committee for his confirmation hearing.

No one doubts of course that the good Senators will vote to confirm him, virtually ensuring that he will end up being the longest-sitting Fed chief in history.

More important to the senators may be Greenspan and Co.'s recent musings that the Fed, one, is definitely going to be raising rates, and two, that it may move at a quicker more rapid pace of rate hiking than originally expected in order to make sure that incipient inflationary pressures don't turn into something uglier.

A lot of folks in Washington are looking to the November election, and if they're Republicans, they are no doubt hoping that the Fed doesn't rein in the economy just when it's starting to create healthy numbers of jobs.

As for Democrats, they may rake Greenspan over the coals for having endorsed tax cuts when the U.S. had a big budget surplus, ostensibly because the surplus was so big it had to be cut down to manageable size. Many economists have lambasted this as a political move on Greenspan's part to provide cover for the big Bush tax cuts.

I'm here inside the Beltway to cover the show for CNN and CNNfn. Should be fun to see how they try to torture him, and how he manages to elude their grasp -- if he does.  

Kathleen Hays anchors CNN Money Morning and The FlipSide, airing Monday to Friday on CNNfn. As part of CNN's Business News team, she also contributes to Lou Dobbs Tonight.