{"id":827,"date":"2016-01-16T04:06:31","date_gmt":"2016-01-16T04:06:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theaegisalliance.com\/home2\/theaegis\/WP\/?p=827"},"modified":"2026-09-01T02:21:38","modified_gmt":"2026-09-01T09:21:38","slug":"see-the-names-of-the-senators-who-voted-against-the-audit-of-the-federal-reserve","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theaegisalliance.com\/nl\/2016\/01\/16\/zie-de-namen-van-de-senatoren-die-tegen-de-controle-van-de-federale-reserve-hebben-gestemd-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The Senators Who Voted Against Auditing The Federal Reserve \u2014 And The Chair Who Took Over After The Probe Collapsed"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Pixelated<\/p>\n

On January 12, 2016, the United States Senate took a recorded vote that still explains the central bank better than any press conference. Rand Paul’s Federal Reserve Transparency Act needed 60 votes to break a filibuster. It got 44. Fifty-three senators decided the Government Accountability Office would not walk the books of the Board of Governors, the regional banks, or the Federal Open Market Committee.<\/p>\n

That was not a procedural hiccup. It was a policy. The only institution that can legally manufacture the unit of account would keep the one privilege no commercial bank is allowed: a vault Congress’s own auditor is forbidden to enter.<\/p>\n

Paul put Democrats who campaign against Wall Street’s revolving door on a roll call. Bernie Sanders voted yes. Elizabeth Warren voted no. The Obama White House had already called a full audit “dangerous” \u2014 not because the numbers were in dispute, but because elected people might “supplant its judgment” on monetary policy. Translated: looking too closely would be treated as interference.<\/p>\n

The Fed is a legally protected monopoly over money. Marketplace and Fortune documented years ago how that monopoly prints dollars, buys interest-bearing securities with them, and books the spread. Post-crisis remittances to Treasury ran on the order of $90 billion a year. That is how the arrangement is sold as a public service. What the public does not get is a GAO walkthrough of emergency facilities, foreign swap lines, or closed-door FOMC trades.<\/p>\n

The one limited look Congress ever forced \u2014 a one-time Dodd-Frank review \u2014 showed more than $16 trillion funneled to domestic and foreign banks during the financial crisis. The 2016 roll call was a decision to keep the next $16 trillion off the record.<\/p>\n

\"List
The January 2016 Senate roll call that blocked a full GAO audit of the Federal Reserve. The names are the story.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The official tally is still posted by the Senate: 114th Congress, Vote 2<\/a>. Read it. The people who told you they would take on the banks put their names on the other side of the page.<\/p>\n

The Same Bill, The Same Arithmetic<\/h2>\n

Audit the Fed did not die in 2016. It came back in nearly every session, and the math never flipped. On November 1, 2023, Paul attached it as an amendment to a spending bill. Forty-six senators voted with him. Fifty-one voted to keep the GAO out. He reminded the floor that the pandemic-era balance sheet had swollen by roughly $5 trillion, much of it steered toward favored industries, and that a central bank which can do that in the dark is not independent \u2014 it is unaccountable.<\/p>\n

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\"BREAKING