Ron Paul & Jim Bunning: Fed Trendsetters? POLITICO

[bobbyw24]

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0609/24181.html


Bunning and Paul: Fed trendsetters?
By: Victoria McGrane
June 25, 2009 05:03 AM EST

Members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee will line up Thursday to take their shots at Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke.

To which Ron Paul and Jim Bunning might say: Where have you been?

Paul and Bunning — viewed by their colleagues as among the most eccentric members of Congress — were anti-Fed before anti-Fed was cool.

Paul, a Republican representative from Texas, has railed against the Federal Reserve for so long that his supporters sometimes chanted “End the Fed! End the Fed!” at rallies during his long-shot 2008 presidential run.

Bunning, a Republican senator from Kentucky, hates the Fed so much that he compared it — unfavorably — with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez when it bailed out the insurance giant American International Group last year.

The two were outliers then, but they aren’t now. Republicans and Democrats alike have balked at President Barack Obama’s proposal to expand the Fed’s power to help prevent another financial crisis. And on Thursday, members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee — which has already served the Fed two subpoenas on the issue — will hammer Bernanke face to face for his role in aiding Bank of America’s takeover of Merrill Lynch, for which Bank of America received $20 billion in bailout funds.

Paul says he’s happy to have his colleagues jump aboard his bandwagon.

“I feel pretty good about it,” Paul told POLITICO.

Paul doesn’t claim responsibility for the anti-Fed movement on the Hill. “I don’t think it’s me so much as the circumstances,” he said. And he readily admits that his real goal — abolishing the Fed altogether — still faces plenty of resistance.

But Paul’s bill to mandate the first-ever audit of the Fed suddenly finds itself with 242 co-sponsors. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) isn’t among them, but even she has begun to speak out in favor of more transparency at the Fed.

Voters watched Congress rush through the $700 billion Wall Street bailout, Paul said, “and all of a sudden, they find out that this money is going to the wrong places as far as they’re concerned. And then they realize Congress has lost control.”

That’s when the concerns he’s raised for years about the Fed’s inflationary policies and unchecked power struck a chord, Paul said. “Could it be possible that the Fed not only can cause these bubbles, but they’re, you know, acting on their own? That’s what I’ve argued. They have more clout financially than the Congress has. I am absolutely convinced of that,” he said.

As hot-tempered as Paul is soft-spoken, Bunning is notorious for his tirades against Bernanke and his predecessor, former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan.

Bunning, no fan of Capitol Hill press, declined to be interviewed for this story. But his record speaks for itself.

He opposed Bernanke’s nomination to the top Fed spot for participating in the “groupthink” of the Fed’s Board of Governors under Greenspan, never challenging or voting against the then-chairman. And he has bashed Bernanke on every step of the financial crisis. While he doesn’t go as far as Paul in calling for the dissolution of the central bank, he, too, continually blasts the Fed for overstepping its bounds.

In September 2008, he introduced legislation to take away the Fed’s authority to make loans to nonbanks, as it did with AIG and now-defunct investment bank Bear Stearns. “I have said on more than one occasion that I don’t think the Federal Reserve can handle the powers they have, and this irresponsible bailout just proves my point,” Bunning said at the time.

That legislation didn’t attract a single co-sponsor. But in March, Bunning teamed up with Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) on an amendment to the nonbinding Senate budget that directed the Fed to disclose the names of banks that have received emergency loans — and to require an audit of the Fed.

The measure passed with 59 votes. And while it didn’t carry the rule of law, Fed observers saw it as a sharp rebuke of the central bank.

“The Federal Reserve has handed out over $2 trillion to various financial institutions with absolutely no accountability for who they are giving to and how much those institutions are getting,” Bunning said. “I have asked repeatedly for an answer to this — but without success. If the Fed is going to print money hand over fist that the United States government can’t afford, I think the taxpayers have a right to know exactly who they are giving this money to and how much. It’s time for the Fed to come clean with the American people.”

As Obama asks Congress to expand the Fed’s regulatory powers as part of his proposal to restructure the financial system, Bunning has quite a bit of company in the skeptics’ corner, including Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia and Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, the ranking Republican on the Senate Banking Committee.

Even Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) has questioned the wisdom of giving the Fed new powers.

Like Bunning, Paul might have been ahead of the curve in his criticism of the Fed, but the Texan says he doesn’t believe in “I told you so.”

“I don’t think you gain any points at all,” he said. “I’d much rather have somebody come down and sit next to me on the House floor and ask me a serious question. That happens more often now than it did.”

[Epic]

Any chance Bunning could endorse Rand because of the anti-Fed position?

[bobbyw24]

http://digg.com/politics/Ron_Paul_Ji...e_Trendsetters

[Aratus]

senator bunning has been quarreling with his local g.o.p organization and party bigwigs...
they tried to bench the former major leager and he got most roiled and upset. so the party
honchos called in karl rove, a dude who is known for his dirty trick brigades and all around slickness...
this has me sorta sympathetic to the idea that senator bunning KNEW his vote totals this time around easily
would statistically have been between his two previous and prior senate runs... he was furious AFTER
he got new polling results, and then when we see trey grayson backpeddaling on a handshake
agreement, the stage was set for rand paul's exploratory committee being quite needful...

[slacker921]

during his long-shot 2008 presidential run.

fuck them. Do they refer to Guiliani's run as a "long-shot"? 4th out of 7 is "long-shot"??

[Knightskye]

[Malachi]

Originally Posted by Epic

Any chance Bunning could endorse Rand because of the anti-Fed position?

Looks like Rand is the only one that isn't sticking it to Bunning....

[Aratus]

i think Rand is waiting for Bunning to totally pull back from running...

[georgiaboy]

would a Bunning endorsement for Rand help/hinder?

From the few times I heard Bunning speak, I liked him.

[Matt Collins]

Originally Posted by Malachi

Looks like Rand is the only one that isn't sticking it to Bunning....

Yes, Rand is very classy.