Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky is putting a hold on President Obama’s nomination of Janet Yellen to chair the Federal Reserve in order to secure a vote on his "transparency" bill that would require a deep audit of the Fed. He's joining with the Campaign for Liberty, an organization chaired by his father, the former Republican Rep. Ron Paul of Texas in this project.
The Sunshine State News reports:
On Thursday, the Campaign for Liberty announced a video on the subject featuring Sen. Paul and John Tate, the president of the group.
“The Senate fight over Barack Obama's Fed chair nominee is just around the corner,” Norm Singleton, the vice president of policy for the Campaign for Liberty, wrote supporters on Thursday. “And Senator Rand Paul has vowed to block the nomination until Harry Reid brings ‘Audit the Fed’ to the floor for a vote. This will be the fight of our lives—but this is our moment!
Singleton insisted the video “has the banksters trembling in fear.”
Sen. Paul plans to formally impose the hold next week when the Senate comes back into session.
Paul's bill—the Federal Reserve Transparency Act (known as the "Audit the Fed" bill)—would eliminate restrictions on the Government Accountability Office's audits of the Fed and put its credit facilities, securities purchases, and quantitative easing activities under congressional oversight. The bill has 18 co-sponsors, including Democratic Sen. Mark Begich of Alaska. A companion bill in the House, introduced by Republican Rep. Paul Broun of Georgia, has 157 co-sponsors, including 13 Democrats.
In an opinion piece in Time magazine Oct. 11, Sen. Paul wrote:
It is also important to focus on the fact that the Federal Reserve is structurally flawed. The institution needs to be reformed to prevent Yellen, or any other future nominee, from using the enormous power of the Fed to aid and abet the allies of big government. I intend on using the Senate’s constitutional power of consent to nominations as a means to educate the American people on the structural flaws and policies of the Fed that are bankrupting our nation.
The Fed’s favored practice of “quantitative easing” has been questionable at best. One need not be an economist or mathematician to wonder whether printing money out of thin air is a sound way to help the economy. Still, as The Washington Post’s Neil Irwin notes, “Yellen has been not merely an engineer of the Fed’s policies of ‘quantitative easing’ and ‘forward guidance,’ but a consistent voice within the central bank to go further.”
To pave the way to confirmation, Yellen has planned meetings with senators in the coming weeks to
make her case. She's initially meet with members of the Senate Banking Committee, the committee that will hold hearings before sending her nomination to the full Senate.
According to Kevin Cirilli, Yellen already has set up meetings with Republican Sens. Richard Shelby of Alabama and Dean Heller of Nevada, as well as Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Jon Tester of Montana, Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Jeff Merkley of Oregon.