Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland President Loretta Mester said the central bank should continue on its gradual path of raising interest rates to prevent the risk of overheating the U.S. economy.

“It’s important for the FOMC to remain very vigilant against falling behind as we continue to make progress on our goals,” Mester said in the text of a speech Monday in Chicago, referring to the policy-making Federal Open Market Committee.

“If we delay too long in taking the next normalization step and then find ourselves in a situation where the labor market becomes unsustainably tight, price pressures become excessive and we have to move rates up steeply, we could risk a recession,” she said.

After raising rates in March, Fed officials left interest rates unchanged at a meeting last week in Washington, but signaled they’re still on track to hike two more times this year. In doing so, they