Right and Left Together
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“Would you like your money to be held in a bank that’s never been audited?” asks Kevin Duewel, Sacramento Campaign for Liberty organizer. There’s a pregnant pause. “That’s a rhetorical question.”
The Folsom resident is speaking about the Federal Reserve System, the system of one central and 12 regional banks that controls the U.S. money supply, and the U.S. Senate and House of Representative bills recently introduced to reform the auditing process for that system.
The House bill, called the Federal Reserve Transparency Act, was introduced by Rep. Ron Paul, the conservative libertarian from Texas. As it happens, Sacramento Campaign for Liberty, which has 130 registered members, is the local remnant of the national movement that supported Paul’s quixotic run in the 2008 Republican presidential primaries.
On Saturday, August 8, from 4 to 8 p.m., the group plans to gather at the Sacramento Memorial Auditorium to promote “Sunshine Day,” which takes its name from the Federal Reserve Sunshine Act introduced in the Senate by Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent progressive from Vermont.
It would be difficult to find two members of Congress more diametrically opposed on the political spectrum than Paul and Sanders. However, the Fed’s refusal to disclose where trillions in bank bailout money has been spent brought the unlikely pair together. Which also explains why Rep. Dennis Kucinich, one of the most liberal members of the House, has enthusiastically endorsed Paul’s bill.
The Federal Reserve is currently audited by the U.S. Government Accountability Office. However, the results of those audits are accessible only to the Federal Reserve’s board of governors. Both Paul and Sanders’ bills seek to reform the process by making the GAO’s report available to Congress.
August 8, 2009
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