Katy-area Congressman Ron Paul (R-Lake Jackson) said he was “disappointed” with the Senate’s failure to pass an amendment sponsored by Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) that included language similar to Paul’s “Audit the Fed” legislation.
For more than a year, Paul has been championing a bill requiring a full audit of the Federal Reserve. Paul’s legislation passed the U.S. House of Representatives by a large margin last fall as part of the House financial reform bill.
Vitter’s amendment would have paved the way in the Senate for what Paul called “a full and ongoing audit of all of the Federal Reserve’s lending and monetary policy activity.”
Despite the setback, Paul said he remains hopeful the Senate will still pass the legislation in some form. He noted the Vitter amendment had the support of more than one-third of the Senate, while a different amendment sponsored by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) calling for disclosure of how $2 trillion of Federal Reserve credit facilities were spent passed the Senate yesterday.
“The 37 votes our measure received in the Senate represent a strong step in our continuing work for full Federal Reserve transparency. In addition, the passage of the Sanders Amendment is a victory for taxpayers, who will finally know who received $2 trillion of their money,” Paul said. “The Fed is no longer an untouchable monolith. It can no longer take for granted its absolute power to create and give away public money at will, with no true accountability. With strong support in the Senate, the House, and especially among the public, more victories for full transparency lie ahead.”
Paul’s congressional district includes much of Cinco Ranch and portions of western Fort Bend County.
I am usually against any foreign aid, but the EU is good risk and there are a lot of goodies we can get out of helping them. Make no doubt about it, we are going to get support for slowing down Iran after this is over and don’t be surprised to see an increase in military support from our fair weather friends across the pond in Iraq and Afgan. Money well spent. It’s like when Wells Fargo finances a payday lender. You don’t really like being associated with loan sharks but you cannot deny the investment is sound.
That type of poor business ethics is what got us into the last financial crisis. Wells Fargo was one of the primary early “alternative loan” (high risk) program banks to get in and out of that risky market. It would be nice to see sound business practices again with ethical people at the helm and I for one do not like forking over billions of dollars of borrowed money and taxes to other countries continuing to increase our growing debt. We need to return to sound money practices and starting with a full audit of the fed is a great way to go. Globalization only means we sell out our economy and constitution for others. NAFTA is a good example of how that has back-fired on us already via lost jobs.
we are bailing out Europe and there is not a peep said about it here in the U.S. Our citizens suffer, but any amount of money for Europeans is okay. They have their own central bank, so why are we doing it???
The Fed has reopened its forex swap lines with the ECB, effectively giving unlimited quantities of dollars to European banks and institutions (and governments)!
The Fed stopped buying Mortgaged Backed Securities here in the U.S. which would have helped American homeowners, but they eagerly rush to bail out the Europeans.
This is beyond outrageous.
Please call, email or write to your Congressional representative immediately and say that the Fed’s actions must be stopped!
Too many in the senate have strings attached to the fed to allow it to open its books. Very ironic considering it was the congress that first established this uncontrollable institution that is now marching us to one global corporate order.
Yes, we need to support the public and publics rights for more ways to come with public taxpayer dollars and prohibit public funds for funding bailout to large to fail bank or corperate polluters landfills, MUD’s watewaters and other polluters!
We need more open government with nothing to hide, only crooks hide themself to try to get away an escape.
Way to go Dr. Paul! More transparency, not less, like our local SL councilman Jones is pushing through his support of the TML lobby we pay taxes to. They want to remove all criminal penalties involving violations of the open meetings and open records act.
I’m tired of career politicians pretending they support open governance while sabotaging it. End the forked tongues!