Sen. Paul: Time to Defy Critics and Pass 'Audit the Fed' Act

It is time to defy the critics and pass the Federal Reserve Transparency Act, which would be a momentous victory for accountability and transparency and send the establishment's head spinning, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul wrote in an opinion piece in The Daily Caller on Monday.

More popularly known as "Audit the Fed," the act would "open up the Fed's agreements with foreign governments and central banks, its discount window and open market operations, its member bank reserves, and its Federal Open Market Committee directives to thorough examination by the people's representatives — for the first time since its creation in 1913," Paul wrote.

The act does this, Paul explained, by removing "the restraints on how the nonpartisan, independent Government Accountability Office can audit the Federal Reserve System, requiring the GAO to conduct an audit within one year of the bill's passage and report back to Congress within 90 days of finishing it."

Paul said that skeptics have said that since the nation's central bank is one of the most powerful institutions in Washington, passing such legislation would never be feasible, but the senator credited "grassroots Americans" for making sure that congressmen don't give up the struggle to make it into law.

The measure has already passed the House and last year missed reaching cloture by only seven votes.

Paul praised those supporting the bill as "concerned Americans who look down the road and wonder how much of our nation's prosperity and opportunity will be swallowed up by debt or lost in financial crises fueled by artificial market signals and central planners' economic tinkering."

The senator stressed that with Congress discussing soon how to institute long-overdue reforms to give Americans back more of their own money and get spending under control by changing how government operates, now is the perfect time to "call for an end to the Fed's secrecy surrounding operations that prop up the powerful and well-connected at the expense of the rest of us" and push the bill over the finish line.

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