Ron Paul: Auditing the Fed Is Responsibility of Congress
by William F. Jasper
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Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) addressed his colleagues from the floor of the House on May 11, expressing his displeasure with the cave-in by Senator Bernie Sanders and other Senators over the proposal to audit the Federal Reserve, an issue that Rep. Paul has been championing for decades. On May 6, Sen. Sanders flip-flopped on his earlier commitment to sponsor an audit amendment identical to the one by Rep. Paul, which had passed in the House with broad, bipartisan support and 319 co-sponsors.
Instead, Sanders offered a weaker substitute amendment that was acceptable to the Federal Reserve and the Obama administration, but which will not allow for a genuine audit of the Fed's ongoing secret operations. The Senate adopted the new Sanders substitute amendment (which many “Audit the Fed” advocates call a “sellout” amendment) by a vote of 96 to 0 on Tuesday, May 11.
A short timer later, the Senate voted on an amendment by Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), which contained the stronger audit language of Ron Paul's House bill, H.R. 1207. Only 37 Senators voted for the genuine audit proposed by the Vitter amendment. (To see the vote, click here).
Following the Vitter amendment vote in the Senate, Rep. Paul addressed his House colleagues, pointing out that due to the Fed's actions, we are in the midst of a serious financial crisis that is rapidly becoming an even much more serious currency crisis. Rep. Paul called on them to exercise their Constitutional responsibility to provide oversight and rein in the Federal Reserve before it can engage in more bailouts of Europe.
Rep. Paul called the Senate vote "disturbing" and pointed out that "our dollar has been devalued 80 percent in terms of gold" in the past 10 years. According to the Congressman, "a currency crisis is on our doorstep," and the Fed is largely responsible for it.
Rep. Paul stated:
The reason this is so disturbing is because of the current events going on in the financial markets. We are right now involved in bailing out Europe and especially bailing out Greece, and we're doing this through the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve does this with currency swaps and they do this literally by giving loans and guarantees to other central banks, and they can even give loans to governments. So this is placing the burden on American taxpayers — not by direct taxation, but by expanding the money supply this is a tax on the American people because this will bring economic hardship to this great country. And because we've been doing this for so many years the economic hardship is already here [and] we've been suffering from it.
May 14, 2010
Dr. Ron Paul is a Republican member of Congress from Texas.
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