Transparency

June 23, 2009


Transparency.

We are actually seeing a legitimate attempt at transparency taking place at the Federal level. Not from the administration that made transparency a reason to vote, but rather from a little old Congressman from Texas by the name of Ron Paul. Congressman Paul introduced transparency legislation to Congress on February 26, 2009 as HR1207 that asks for an Audit of the Federal Reserve. This legislation would allow the American public transparency to see what the Federal Reserve is doing with the money that is collected from the taxpayers in this country. In that each taxpayer is audited by the IRS on a yearly basis, a member of Congress has to search far and wide for a legitimate reason not to support legislation to audit the Federal Reserve.

This legislation is enjoying tremendous non-partisan support. It takes about 5 minutes to read the bill, it has no amendments, it is written in very simple language! As of June 22, 2009 this legislation now enjoys a majority in the House of Representatives with 237 co-sponsors and will likely continue to get more. All but three members of congress from Minnesota: Keith Ellison the 5th District, Betty McCollum the 4th District and James Oberstar the 8th District have not supported this legislation to date. It is expected that this legislation will proceed to the House floor and get voted on by the end of July. Once this legislation has passed in the House of Representatives, it moves onto the Senate and we can see how many Senators will endorse transparency.

We do have a system that will respond if we wake up enough people, but that’s the tough job, but they will respond when they hear from the people. Much credit needs to be directed to the grass roots effort to call, email and send letters to members of Congress to wake them up. We need to now focus on the Senate version S 604, and start waking up the Senators to the people's version of Transparency

Patrick Henry