NEW YORK — Comments from Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke set off a stock market rally early Wednesday, but it wasn’t long before another Fed official cut it short.

In testimony before Congress, Bernanke said the central bank would be open to new economic stimulus measures, but only if the economy gets much worse. The Dow Jones industrial average jumped 164 points, or 1.3 percent.

Most of those gains evaporated later after Richard Fisher, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, said in a speech that the Fed had already “pressed the limits of monetary policy.”

The Standard & Poor’s 500 index rose 4.08, the Dow rose 44.73 and the Nasdaq rose 15.01.

Stocks also took a hit in the afternoon when House Speaker John Boehner called into question whether lawmakers would agree to raise the government’s borrowing limit by an Aug. 2 deadline.