Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said he’s optimistic that a bill to audit the Federal Reserve would pass if Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., would allow the legislation to receive a vote.
“The Fed has never been audited and I think, you know, transparency is important,” McConnell said on the Mandy Connell Show this morning. “And there’s a number of Senate Democrats who maybe don’t want it to come up but wouldn’t want to vote against it if it did. So Rand Paul and I are both going to be looking for ways to get that voted on in the Senate.”
The idea of auditing the Federal Reserve gained steam during the presidential runs of Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, after the bank bailouts of 2008.
“The Fed’s activities during the financial crisis were unprecedented, and I support an audit because taxpayers deserve to know what powerful government agencies, even the independent ones, are doing in their name,” McConnell said to The Washington Examiner in a statement.
An ‘audit the Fed’ bill proposed by Ron Paul received overwhelming support from Republicans and Democrats when it passed in the last Congress by a vote of 327-98. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., refused to bring the bill to a vote in the Senate, even though he used to be a perennial sponsor of legislation to audit the central bank.
“I have sponsored legislation every year that would call for an audit of the Federal Reserve system,” Reid said in 1995, as Business Insider noted. “I think we should audit the Federal Reserve — it’s taxpayer’s money that’s being used there.”
Rand Paul introduced the bill earlier this month with 22 co-sponsors, including the minority leader. “Harry Reid knows full well that Audit the Fed- which he previously claimed to be a strong supporter of- would pass both the House and the Senate if he allowed a vote,” Campaign for Liberty president John Tate said in a statement. “It seems the Senate Majority Leader doesn’t want the American people to know what he, President Obama, and the Federal Reserve have been doing to our money and our economy.”
