The details of what the Fed did were kept secret until a provision in the Dodd-Frank Act that I sponsored required the Government Accountability Office to audit the Fed's lending programs during the financial crisis.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Dodd-Frank greatly expanded the regulatory reach of the Federal Reserve. It did not, however, examine whether it was correctly structured to account for these new and expansive powers. Therefore, the Committee will be examining the appropriateness of the Fed's current structure in a post Dodd-Frank world.
I felt that the Fed had always been the agency that picked up the pieces when there was a financial crisis, and it was invented to do exactly that.
Every major federal campaign-finance-reform effort since 1943 has attempted to treat corporations and unions equally. If a limit applied to corporations, it applied to unions; if unions could form PACs, corporations could too; and so on. DISCLOSE is the first major campaign-finance bill that has not taken this approach.
Governments need to be authorized to provide 'open bank assistance.' The convolutions of Dodd-Frank aimed at 'avoiding' this tactic are ludicrous and will prove to be extremely costly to the system.
I introduced the Transparency in Government Act, a multi-faceted transparency bill that would bring unprecedented access and accountability to the federal government.
The Fed contributed to the financial crisis, keeping interest rates too low for too long. I give them credit for responding and stabilizing the economy and the financial sector during the crisis. But then they tried to do too much with quantitative easing that went on forever, just dramatically exploding their balance sheets.
The DISCLOSE Act is a testament to the wisdom of the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United. The First Amendment sought to place political speech beyond the government's control, and we can be glad that it did.
It was not a state secret that I would call on Thackeray. I was not hiding anything.
Audit the Fed is a bill that would politicize monetary policy, would bring short-term political pressures to bear on the Fed. In terms of openness about our financial accounts, we are extensively audited.
I want to be completely clear that I strongly oppose 'Audit the Fed.'