Ron Paul may have retired from Congress but his dream for the Federal Reserve to be audited and ultimately abolished is alive and well.
Georgia Rep. Paul Broun was a staunch ally of Rep. Paul’s legislation to audit the Fed and is now the lead sponsor of a bill identical to the one that easily passed the House in the 112th Congress.
“I’m an original intent constitutionalist, as was Ron Paul while he was here” said Broun. “We should audit the Fed. Hopefully we get rid of the Fed, and I introduced a bill to do that also.”
Broun says it’s incredible that the public knows virtually nothing about an institution with so much power over our economy.
“Congress has basically abdicated its duty to control money and the monetary supply and control of our money supply as a nation over to this semi-governmental agency that’s not really governmental,” said Broun. “In reality, we have had no auditing. We have absolutely no idea what they’re doing over there. We’ve had this quantitative easing now into the third time, which has been totally unproductive in trying to get our economy going. The Fed housing policy was part of the reason we had the housing bubble and crash. They’re still managing our monetary supply. They’re creating more and more dollars that have no or very little value behind them. Our dollars are becoming worth less and less. As time goes on, they’re going to be worthless.”
“It’s absolutely critical that we audit the Fed so the American people can see what’s going on over there,” said Broun. “Do it from top to bottom so that we can have transparency in this entity called the Federal Reserve. Hopefully, the American people will see that we need to go back to the gold standard, which I’ve introduced, and get rid of the Fed.”
The congressman says it’s ridiculous that the only clues we get on Fed actions are in the periodic comments from Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke.
“We see what he says, but we really have no clue how they’re managing our money across the board, how they are dealing with big banks or small community banks. We have no idea what they’re doing in creating monetary policy,” said Broun, who says lawmakers don’t even know how much Bernanke and other Fed officials earn in salary or have in the way of benefits.
The GOP-led House easily approved the bill to audit the Fed in the previous Congress, but Broun says it died on the other side of Capitol Hill.
“The problem is Mr. Obstructionist, Harry Reid, threw it in the trash can over on the Senate side. So hopefully we can get the Senate moving on it by getting the American people demanding that we audit the Fed,” said Broun.
Broun reiterated that his ultimate goal is to abolish the Federal Reserve and return control over monetary policy to Congress. He admits people don’t have much confidence in Congress either, but Broun contends putting Congress in that role at least offers the chance of that power and money ultimately returning to the the states.
“I’m a Marine and I’m fighting for liberty, and everything I do up here is fighting for the future of our nation,” said Broun.