A bill subjecting the Federal Reserve to a more thorough audit process has finally hit the Senate floor—and Rand Paul and Ted Cruz have jumped all over it.
The Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2015, reintroduced to the Senate a week ago, would allow the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to audit the agency, therefore creating oversight over the Federal Reserve.
“The Federal Reserve needs to fully open its books so Congress and the American people can see what has been going on. This is a crucial first step to getting back to a more stable dollar and a healthy economy for the long term,” Cruz said in a written statement.
“Right now, the Fed is adjusting monetary policy according to whims, getting it wrong over and over again, and causing booms and busts. If you look at the crash of 2008,” he added, “the Fed’s policy destabilizing our money contributed powerfully both to the bubble and the collapse.
Opposition comes from those such as the Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen, who believes that “Audit the Fed is a bill that would politicize monetary policy and it would bring short-term political pressures to bear on the Fed.”
Cruz, Rand, and the 20 other senators who have co-sponsored the act, however, are of the mind that “by auditing the Fed, the American people can fully understand the scope and consequences of the agency’s extraordinary monetary policy since 2008—and then know what reforms are needed to improve the Fed’s operations and accountability.”
Anna Pfaff works for the American Principles Project.
