With the controversy this summer over health care and the earlier passage of cap-and-trade, the stimulus package, and other egregious assaults on liberty and our economy, another attempt to ensure accountability in government has sort of slipped under the radar screen. This came from our friends at the Campaign for Liberty:
Campaign for Liberty is leading the fight to pass Ron Paul’s bill to Audit the Fed. With 282 cosponsors in the House and 23 in the Senate, your efforts have so far proven very successful in establishing large, bipartisan support for Federal Reserve transparency. We’ve come a long way in demonstrating to the nation that monetary policy is a critical issue, and every day more and more people are waking up to the harm that the Fed has caused our economy.
But our mission is not yet complete. There are more Americans to educate, more signatures to collect, and more work to be done to combat the “big guns” that have come out against Ron Paul’s Audit the Fed bill. That’s why today I’m proud to announce that we’ve taken the next step in our efforts by launching AuditTheFed.com, a focused, coalition website with one purpose: to push this historic piece of legislation through Congress, past the President’s desk, and into law.
AuditTheFed.com includes: contact information for your congressman and senators, petitions, widgets, and banners to promote the website, dynamic graphs of the bill’s cosponsors, a detailed summary of the Audit the Fed bill, a list of our growing coalition, a blog to keep you up to date on all the latest Audit the Fed news, a sign up for email updates, and social networks to help get the word out online. This website was designed to put you, the liberty-loving activist, in a position to efficiently and effectively promote Audit the Fed to family, friends, neighbors, and strangers alike.This new website is the latest addition to our efforts to Audit the Fed, but it is by no means the culmination. Stay tuned to CampaignforLiberty.com in the coming days for information on how we plan to mobilize to gain not only more cosponsors for HR 1207 and S 604, but support for a vote in the House and Senate.
Obviously this is one of hundreds of advocacy websites that have popped up over the last half-decade or so, ones that seek to influence the direction government takes. But in a quest for accountability this site seems to be on the right side, and even though many of those who back the Campaign for Liberty were supporters of the failed Ron Paul Presidential campaign, for the most part I happen to think their idea of limited government is a good model to follow.
Don’t be fooled by this push. This bill would allow Congress to audit the Fed’s decisions and decision making process on monetary policy and effectively remove any independence they have. I am surprised you would want Congress to have control of monetary policy. Is that because they do such a great job fiscally already?
As far as an audit in the traditional sense, the GAO already has complete access to the books of the Fed and they know how every penny is spent. That type of transparency is already there.
What independence? It’s not like the Federal Reserve is some magically independent agency currently. Like any other position held by grace of presidential appointment Bernanke and co. go right along with the administration’s agenda to ensure they keep their positions.