Transparency and Accountability

It’s a rare thing to find a politician who is actually trustworthy and fights for transparency and accountability from government. Barack Obama is not doing that. Regrettably, he has already gone back on some important promises, some of which I’ll save for discussion at a later time. Needless to say, it’s the disease that plagues the genre that is politics.

One major exception to that rule is Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX). I didn’t support Paul’s candidacy for President for reasons that I won’t get into here but, since then, I’ve found him to be one of perhaps only a handful of politicians from either party that are worthy, in my opinion, of respect and trust. What first caught my eye from Paul is his steadfast support of private property rights, something that I believe strongly in. He is also a watchdog as it pertains to the strong need for our government to be transparent and accountable.

Paul has apparently obtained 245 co-sponsors to a bill that would require a full-fledged audit of the Federal Reserve. Previous attempts have not yielded much results for the Texas congressman.

In the past, I never got much support, but I think it’s the financial crisis obviously that’s drawing so much attention to it, and people want to know more about the Federal Reserve.

The bill calls for the comptroller general of the Government Accountability Office to audit the Fed and report the findings to Congress. Currently, the GAO’s ability to perform this kind of audit is severely restricted. House Republican leader John Boehner wrote on his blog:

The Federal Reserve Transparency Act would remove all of these restrictions, and allow GAO to get real answers from the Federal Reserve to protect American taxpayers.

The unfortunate thing is that Paul’s bill is currently languishing in the House Financial Services Committee, which is chaired by Barney Frank (D-Mass). The bill has been there now since February, collecting additional sponsors. Paul has said that Frank has promised him the bill will be dealt with and is willing to give it a hearing. Paul believes that it has enough support to pass the House.

Paul’s ultimate goal and one which I support is to abolish the Federal Reserve altogether.

I blame almost everything on the Fed because they create the bubbles, they create the credit.

Paul argues that the Federal Reserve is unconstitutional and that it has no legal authority to operate the monetary system.