Alan Grayson Saves The Day On Federal Reserve Audit

Yesterday something truly startling happened. The American people won and the Establishment lost-- IN CONGRESS. That never happens. Alan Grayson and Ron Paul teamed up and made it happen-- against the wishes of their party leaders and, more important, against the wishes of the big banks that donimate the country and finance the campaigns of most of Congress. (Which probably means the bill-- we'll get to that in a moment-- will die in the House of Lords.)

Two days ago the Democratic leadership got Mel Watt to introduce a Wall Street-friendly bill as a substitute to the amendment Grayson and Paul have gotten most members of Congress to sign onto-- a bill that will mandate a serious audit of the Fed. The Republicans decided it must be a good thing if the Democratic leadership opposes it but it couldn't get out of committee if the chairman, Barney Frank, could hold all the Democrats together. Grayson, who is on extremely good terms with Frank, wasn't about to let that happen and it managed to whip up 15 Democrats to stick with the amendment he and Ron Paul had put together. Incredibly, many of these names are the ones you see at DWT on lists of the bad guys voting against the interests of working families.

John Adler (D-NJ)
Alan Grayson (D-FL)
Travis Childers (Blue Dog-MS)
Steve Driehaus (D-OH)
Rubén Hinojosa (D-TX)
Suzanne Kosmas (D-FL)
Walt Minnick (Blue Dog-ID)
Ed Perlmutter (D-CO)
David Scott (Blue Dog-GA)
Brad Sherman (D-CA)
Jackie Speier (D-CA)
Paul Hodes (D-NH)
Lacy Clay (D-MO)
Gary Peters (D-MI)
Dan Maffei (D-NY)

I asked Grayson was he was willing to take the kind of political risk it took to make sure this passed. He pointed out that "many of the people who opposed it have bought into one of the big fictions of our era. That fiction is the fiction of Fed 'independence.' The Fed may be independent from our elected political leadership, but the Fed is anything but independent from Wall Street. On the contrary, the Fed is government of Wall Street, by Wall Street, and for Wall Street. Wall Street mobilized against this amendment to perpetuate its monopoly control of the money supply, and its ability to conduct secret bailouts with Fed blank checks. For once, Wall Street lost, and the people won.

This is important because it represents new hope that we can stop the wholesale transfer of wealth from us to them."

It passed (the House Financial Services Committee) 43-26 and since the bill has around 300 co-sponsors in the House, it is likely to pass regardless of what Hoyer tries to do to sabotage it.

The measure, based on a Paul proposal that has attracted more than 300 co-sponsors, passed, 43-26, as an amendment to a financial reform bill. Florida Democrat and fellow Fed critic Alan Grayson co-sponsored the amendment with Paul and played a leading role drumming up support for it among committee members. The adoption of this amendment is an extraordinary victory for Paul, whose libertarian, anti-Fed leanings have often been dismissed by the political establishment.

The amendment would give the Government Accountability Office much greater to audit the Federal Reserve, which has a long history of independence from congressional audits. Paul and Grayson beat out a competing measure offered by Rep. Mel Watt (D-N.C.), who after weeks of negotiations with the pair felt their measure would threaten the Fed’s monetary policy.

Grayson, however, told Politico in an interview that Watt’s amendment would add more restrictions on the GAO’s ability to audit the Fed, not less. “And there’s a crying need to expand it because the Federal Reserve has completely changed the way it’s done business since a year and a half ago.”