Alan Grayson
(Washington, DC) – Congressman Alan Grayson successfully steered an important bipartisan amendment through the House Financial Services Committee today. The Paul-Grayson amendment clears the way for the first independent audit of the Federal Reserve since the central bank was created in 1913.
Congressman Grayson said, “The Federal Reserve has conducted secret bailouts that range in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Congress never voted on them, and the President never approved them. This cannot go on any longer. It’s bad enough that we have bailouts at all. But it is really bad if they are secret, with the Fed transferring money to banks without the public knowing about it.”
The amendment will be part of a larger bill aimed at reforming and regulating the financial markets, in order to prevent another massive collapse. Exposing how the Federal Reserve operates is a crucial component to any meaningful reform. “We need to figure out what they’ve done and then we can figure out how to respond,” Congressman Grayson said.
The non-partisan Government Accountability Office will conduct the audits. The Paul-Grayson amendment closely mimics H.R. 1207, the Audit the Fed bill. Representative Ron Paul first introduced the idea of auditing the Fed 26 years ago. It never garnered much support until this year, when Congressman Grayson became the first Democrat to co-sponsor H.R. 1207. He literally walked it around the floor of the House during votes, encouraging Members to support it. The bill now has 310 co-sponsors out of the 435 Members, including well over 100 Democrats and every single Republican.
The amendment passed the Committee by a vote of 43-26. You can read the entire Paul-Grayson amendment here.
“I did not support this because it is a Democratic bill or a Republican bill, I supported it because Ron Paul is right,” Congressman Grayson said.
