Earlier on the floor today, Sanders and Dodd announced a modification to his amendment to audit the Fed's outlay of $2 trillion in the banking crisis. The meat of the modified amendment [pdf] is this:
"Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the Board of Governors shall publish on its website, not later than December 1, 2010, with respect to all loans and other financial assistance it has provided during the period beginning on December 1, 2007 and ending on the date of enactment of this Act under the Asset-Backed Commercial Paper Money Market Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility, the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility, the Primary Dealer Credit Facility, the Commercial Paper Funding Facility, the Term Securities Lending Facility, the Term Auction Facility, Maiden Lane, Maiden Lane II, Maiden Lane III, the agency Mortgage-Backed Securities program, foreign currency liquidity swap lines, and any other program created as a result of the third undesignated paragraph of section 13 of the Federal Reserve Act."
That's still a pretty broad audit. In addition, according to Sanders' statement on the floor, saying it "would allow the GAO to conduct a top-to-bottom audit of all of the Federal Reserve's emergency lending activities since December 1, 2007. In addition, the modifications require the Fed to put on its Web site all of the recipients of over $2 trillion in emergency assistance since December 1, 2007,"
Via e-mail, the Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Neal Wolin provided the administration's support.
We appreciate the work of Senator Sanders and Senator Dodd to work together on a strong amendment that ensures full and open transparency regarding emergency lending programs, without compromising the Federal Reserve's full independence with respect to the conduct of monetary policy.
Senator Sanders’ revised amendment provides for a comprehensive GAO audit of the Federal Reserve Board’s operations in response to the recent financial crisis, while preserving the existing protections of the Federal Reserve’s independence with respect to monetary policy.
We are confident that the revised amendment proposed by Senator Sanders strikes the appropriate balance: providing full transparency of lending programs while protecting the bedrock principle of central bank independence on monetary policy that has served our nation so well.
With objections from Treasury and the White House answered, the amendment is likely to pass, unless for some reason the Republicans who all supported it earlier decide to jump ship. As of now, they're still intending to have the vote tonight.
Update: Ah, intentions. After an interminable procedural vote,requiring the sergeant at arms to get everyone to the floor, they scared up 96 of them. Then they went to a quorum call. Since they are not all there, the vote tonight (there were actually supposed to be a total of four tonight) is looking iffy.
Update 2: Reid is frustrated. And now we're moving onto Brown/Kaufman? This is no way to legislate.