The Tea Party

This post has sort of been *ahem* brewing in my head since late October/early November of last year. There are many reasons for this delay--election season, finals, the holidays, etc--but perhaps it was for the better as now we have a bit of perspective. The impetus for writing was a at least semi-scientific survey I came across--more on that in a minute--and an article I came across giving something of a brief history of the Tea Party to that point. Now, after the election, and with the new Congress about ready to get down to business, it is fairly clear that the Tea Party is going to have at least some staying power in American politics, and that makes a sort of retrospective analysis seem appropriate.

The very interesting Wall Street Journal piece "Birth of a Movement" has it that while small pockets of protesters began coming out of the woodwork during the Bush bailouts, the watershed moment was Rick Santelli's February 19th 2009 rant from the floor of the stock exchange in Chicago.



That is probably as good an event to pick as any. But before the epithet of choice for the guy in a tricorn hat waving a Gadsden Flag and throwing tea into bodies of water was "teabagger," it was "Paultard."

On November 5th, 2007, Ron Paul raised $4.2 million dollars in 24 hours. No one connected to the campaign was involved with planning it--I am reasonably certain none of them knew about it before the money started rolling in, and if they did, they certainly didn't expect it to get as crazy as it did. I remember following this on The Daily Paul and being awestruck (I stopped going to The Daily Paul after it was overrun by conspiracy types for a period...I don't know if this is still the case.). What was even cooler was this other site, though, which I am surprised to find still exists: http://ronpaulgraphs.com/. The site harvested date from the campaign's widget and used it to calculate things like estimated new donors, and you could watch all kinds of graphs updating in real time, which was especially fun whenever there was a money bomb.

Which brings me to the point I was trying to make--the second money bomb was on December 16th, 2008--the 234th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party. In addition to an even bigger money bomb (Wikipedia has the total between $6 and $6.6 million, arguably still the largest amount donated to a campaign on a single day. Roughly half of these donations came from people who hadn't given to the previous effort. A video promoting the money bomb went quasi-viral...there were a lot of very well done amateur Ron Paul campaign videos back then, now that I think of it, many of which struck quite an emotional chord with me at the time.



See Also: "Don't Tread on Me," "The High Tide."

I would be remiss at this point if I didn't mention the name of Trevor Lyman who put a lot of effort and imagination into the grassroots fundraising. We also have him to thank for the Ron Paul Blimp, which is hilarious and awesome.

Anyway, as much as I love reliving the high point of the '08 primaries, I've started to drift a bit. The point is that a lot of the feet-on-the-ground activists associated with the Ron Paul campaign (often organized through MeetUp)had adopted the whole retro-American-colonial-era look long before there was a "Tea Party Movement." Here's a description of some of the Ron Paul Tea Party events in Boston in December 2007 from the Boston Globe: Ron Paul's tea party for dollars and here's a follow-up: Ron Paul raises millions in today's Boston Tea Party event. Here's an alternate take from the Washington Post: Ron Paul Beats Own Fundraising Record. Again--tricorn hats. Gadsden flags. Tea bags. Sound familiar?

Apart from the trappings of the modern Tea Party movement, we also see some of the language originating in the Paul campaign as well as some of the issues. No one was talking about the importance of the Constitution and the legacy of the founders before the Paul campaign. No one was chanting "end the Fed," either.

Ron Paul, of course, did not win the primary...but some of the funds raised ended up as seed money for Campaign for Liberty and Young Americans for Liberty, so it can't be said that nothing positive came of the money bombs. I remember thinking at the time that maybe he should have spent more than he did on the primaries, but in retrospect it probably wouldn't have mattered.

The end of the campaign season left a whole lot of Ron Paul meetup groups with nothing to do, and I suspect that a great many of them became some of the original Tea Partiers. The next big "Tea Party" event was what people called the "Tax Day Tea Party," a series of simultaneous rallies scheduled on and around April 15th, 2008. There was an event in Pittsburgh, but I did not attend...I don't recall whether I had heard of it or not.

It was around then that the national umbrella groups started to congeal and FreedomWorks started trying to ride the wave. It was also when Glenn Beck began becoming more of a Tea Party icon...by September, the 9/12 crowd had done the whole "let's all go to DC for a day" thing that would flourish a year later with the whole Rally to Restore Honor thing. In any case by that time the Tea Party was a national story and I'm unlikely to add anything people already don't know by way of rehashing the narrative here.

Which brings us to the lead-up to the 2010 election, and a study I read by an organization called MyType. They get their data from Facebook surveys, which probably introduces some selection bias, but honestly it's probably not that much worse than landline telephone surveys, and they had a very large n. I've quoted the executive summary below.

MyType, a psychographic opinion research firm, surveyed over 17,000 Americans about the Tea Party to reveal the demographics, values, morals and personalities of the movement's supporters. Looking for the defining characteristics of a presumably cohesive party, MyType instead found the movement in the middle of an identity crisis. According to MyType's data, devoutly religious conservatives comprise 22.5% of the Tea Party and are its fastest growing segment. They bring with them a fundamentally different set of values, morals and personalities than libertarian supporters, a core group that represent 17% of the party. While the former tend to be morally charged, family-oriented traditionalists, many libertarian supporters are neither religious nor traditional – rather, they are independent, intellectual, and morally permissive. The rising prominence of religious conservatives within the movement, highlighted by recent religious right rhetoric from several prominent figures affiliated with the Tea Party, appears to be driving away libertarians and others. Despite the surge in support from religious conservatives, overall support for the Tea Party is in decline.

The complete study is available here. The results are summarized here, which is a nice intermediate-length read that I got a lot out of. I had always suspected that the Tea Party movement had a split personality, and the researchers were able to come up with distinct libertarian and Christian conservative psychological profiles that fit large portions of the movement.

I did attend the second Tax Day Tea Party event in Pittsburgh on April 11, 2009. Alan Keyes (barf) was the keynote speaker. I wore my "Students for Ron Paul" shirt, which was pretty well received. I also went to several Tea Party events in the summer of 2009 as part of my internship with Bureaucrash. These events were attended by a hodge-podge of paleoconservatives, libertarians, Libertarians, Objectivists, veterans groups, and one or two guys wandering around aimlessly with conspiracy theory signs (Almost always male, almost always with unkempt beards. Or maybe that's just my imagination filling in the gaps in memory, who knows.) Occasionally an abortion group would show up but other than that I didn't run into any culture warriors. There was dialogue. You could talk to these people, and they'd listen with interest.

As summer headed into fall and the election grew closer, the trend was a libertarian exodus and a religious conservative influx. Some have speculated that this was because religious conservatives are joiners whereas libertarians aren't. I don't think that explains it entirely. If it were true (and I'm not so sure that it is as true as the stereotype would have you believe), it would go a long way in terms of showing why the schism was causing one faction to leave rather than the other, but it doesn't explain there being a schism in the first place. Moreover, it doesn't explain why so many from the religious right would join a movement that had a fairly strong libertarian streak at the time.

My take is that what we're seeing happen to the Tea Party was probably inevitable from the beginning, for several reasons. First, there are only so many libertarians, and you can only convert people so quickly. The larger a "libertarian" movement gets, the less likely it is to be actually libertarian. Second, it isn't as though the religious conservatives just came out of nowhere. Many of them were probably in the movement from the very start, only at first the fault lines weren't visible. In the early days, the Tea Party was widely conceived as a movement about economic policy only. The libertarian and religious conservative elements (and presumably a variety of other elements) could coexist so long as "social issues" remained on the back burner (Let's leave aside for a moment whether such a dichotomy makes sense.)

The rub is that you don't have the option of not talking about social issues when you're running for office, and both moderate GOP primary opponents and liberal general election foes were eager to make Tea Party candidates talk about social issues. Being anti-bailout, anti-tax, anti-nationalization of industry was a good place to be in terms of popularity back in November. Being an incumbent was not. What we saw, I think, was a desperate effort on the behalf of establishment candidates to make the elections about something, anything, other than the economy.

This trend produced some bizarre political ads.

This one makes me laugh every time, although it isn't as bad as some pundits made it out to be. It was a risky ad that backfired to a degree.



Christine O'Donnell is obviously not the sort of person I'd ever vote for, but the fact that she felt compelled to go on television and deny that she's had congress with the beast strikes me as wrong on several levels. Speaking of the occult...

Is this even real?



That was a rhetorical question. It's real. Also, Aqua Buddha is my new god. You heard it here first, folks.

I get the sense that the media and other candidates just had no idea what to do with the Tea Party candidates...I think that this confusion was twofold; they didn't understand their tactics (even now most folks in Washington see politics as a top-down game), and they didn't understand where they were coming from ideologically. I won't deny that some of the vitriol directed at Tea Party candidates and the Tea Party generally is deserved, but I think a large portion of it is just the reaction of a group of people faced with something they both cannot understand and believe themselves to be above. I mean really, populist Constitutionalist conservatives? And they dress up in costumes? They're obviously rank amateurs, and all we have to do is wait for them to self-destruct while mocking them unceasingly. Leave politics to the professionals.

Of course, while in some places things played out according to the establisment candidates' script, there were enough races where things didn't go down quite so simply.

And so Ron Paul's son is a Senator, and Harry Reid somehow got out of the race of his life (in a manner, incidentally, that I think smells to high heaven of foul play...but I haven't researched the matter thoroughly enough to know one way or the other), we had a write-in candidate somehow win in Alaska. Democrats were given a shellacking, and yet it seems like it's the Republican leadership that is the most terrified of anyone.

Then this nonsense down in Arizona happened. I have to admit I was expecting a bunch of noise from all sides about how we shouldn't politicize the tragedy and whatnot, but instead what happened was this bizarre race to point fingers followed by a series of "well-I-nevers" and takings of umbrage. And claims of blood libel...which is a can of worms I'm content to let rot on the shelf.

Getting back on track--we had this election. The Tea Partiers all lost the "don't talk about gays and weed" game they had been playing so well; indeed it would have been nigh-impossible to navigate an election cycle without opening Pandora's box. This is important because it has, I think, rather strong implications in terms of libertarian political strategy.

There is, of course a time and a place for coalitions and big tents and setting aside differences with conservatives (including religious conservatives and hard-core neocons, with particular care taken). What the Tea Party experience should have taught us is that electoral politics and grassroots activism is not the place. This brings me back to my dangling thread from earlier. There aren't really any "social issues" and "economic issues." Economic activity takes place in a social context; indeed it would be silly to try and describe an economic system apart from describing a social system. Issues like drug use and immigration, which some call "social," are in fact perhaps more reasonably seen as instances of a product ban and artificial barrier to trade in the labor market. The line is getting a little tired at this point, but I'm going to repeat it nonetheless: there is one freedom, and it is indivisible. We should have remembered that it is indivisible conceptually, and we have been reminded that it is indivisible practically. What we need to be doing is getting people to think about political issues in a systematically libertarian way. The a la carte approach, where libertarians are seen as oddities that are a hybrid of economic conservatives and social liberals, picking and choosing various positions from both sides, has to go. It is bad for branding and hinders libertarian activist efforts as a practical matter. I will say it again: we need to find ways to get people to think like libertarians, not get them to adopt positions which happen to be libertarian on a given issue. "Fusionism," as the doctrine of libertarian-conservative alliance is called, is a relationship where one party sees nearly all of the benefit, and here's a hint: it smells of elephant dung.

We need to stay on-message. The left and the right are hypocrites; the state is inimical to freedom, it is an instrument of violence which various political factions seek to wield for their own benefit, it is an unsuitable means of managing the increasingly complex network of human relationships we call society or civilization, and it must be severely curtailed if not abolished as both an ethical and a practical matter.

And that, I think, about concludes my remarks on the Tea Party.

UPDATE: David Boaz has weighed in, and he is considerably more optimistic than I have been above. Some food for thought here.
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/does-the-tea-party-care-about-liberty/

Ron Paul at Cato on Federal Reserve Transparency

I posted this on my blog over at Bureaucrash Social, but since that's a password-gated community right now, I'm re-posting it here. Enjoy!

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The Cato Institute hosted three speakers this Wednesday in the F. A. Hayek Auditorium in its DC office. The topics under discussion were Dr. Paul’s bill to audit the Federal Reserve (HR 1207) and the relationship between the Federal Reserve, the private sector, Congress, and the Treasury.

Dr. Paul’s bill would expand the GAO’s authority to audit the Federal Reserve. The current law, originally passed in 1978, allows only a limited audit process. For instance, the Federal Reserve’s dealings with foreign central banks are not currently subject to audit. HR 1207 removes this and other restrictions, fully opening the Fed’s books to public scrutiny. Dr. Paul stressed that the bill wouldn’t allow Congress to interfere in the Fed’s decision making process; it only makes a full record of the central bank’s activities publicly available.

Appearing on the panel with the Texan congressman were Gilbert Schwartz of Schwartz & Ballen LLP, formerly Associate General Counsel to the Federal Reserve, and Bert Ely, president of Ely & Company, Inc.

Schwartz emphasized that while the Federal Reserve and other agencies were partially to blame for the financial crisis, Dr. Paul’s bill was unnecessary at best and at worst had the potential to hurt the economy by undermining the Federal Reserve’s independence. He pointed out that although the Fed lending to private sector institutions outside of the banking industry is unusual, it is not unprecedented and is authorized by law. Section 13(3) of the Federal Reserve Act authorizes the Fed to lend to businesses “in unusual and exigent circumstances,” and was used to lend to farmers and other business owners in the 1930s. Schwartz also pointed out that some of the expansion in the monetary base has been undercut by $700 billion in increased deposits with the Fed. Although by Schwartz’s admission, the Fed might be criticized for a lack of openness, he saw its intervention as instrumental to preventing a total economic collapse, citing the chaos caused by the collapse of Lehman Brothers as evidence.

The third member of the panel, Bert Ely, pointed out how the balance sheets of the Fed and the Treasury are interconnected and identified several areas where current policy could be reexamined. His central question was whether the Fed’s power to lend to private industry without Congressional approval should exist at all, and whether it makes sense for that power to rest with the Fed rather than another agency such as the Treasury. Ely said that Congress should address these questions and, depending on the answers, change existing laws.

Congressman Paul posed a question which he challenged opponents of his bill to answer. “Why not?” Most objections to an audit don’t hold water. Merely opening the Fed’s books is not an assault on its independence. Concerns that an audit would endanger the trust foreign central banks have in the Fed are based on a slippery-slope scenario where auditing leads to meddling. Paul pointed out that the Fed is losing trust anyway, for reasons unrelated to an audit, and that we shouldn’t be more afraid of exposing the truth than we are of the consequences of potentially shrouding the Fed’s failures in secrecy. The other main argument against an audit is that making the Fed’s internal discussions public would upset the marketplace in ways the Fed would not intend. Paul pointed out that under the current system, rampant guessing surrounds every meeting of the Fed’s directors, and that this has much the same effect. Schwartz added that there was a time when the Fed didn’t even release its interest rate target as determined at an internal meeting until months or years afterwards, and there were doomsday predictions about the effect that making the information known immediately would wreak havoc with the economy. These predictions haven’t panned out, Schwartz said, and there’s no reason to suspect that additional transparency would cause any more speculative behavior than exists currently.

In short, the bill is a common-sense measure. Where disagreements exist, they’re about what to do next. Paul wants to legalize competing currencies; practically, this would mean allowing people to pay their debts in gold and to enter into contracts with payments denominated in gold. He predicts that monetary reform is coming whether we like it or not, and that to prepare, we need to have information about what went wrong in the past as well as a failsafe in the form of a legal competing currency. Regarding the current monetary regime, Paul simply said “this system has ended.” He sees a chain of central bank failures dating back to the Fed’s creation in 1913 as ample evidence, and said of our current crisis, which he views as another failure of the Federal Reserve System, “this is the big one.”

Schultz had a different take. He said that the message that more transparency is needed is getting to the Fed, and said of Paul’s bill, “I’m not sure this legislation corrects the problem.” Ely said that future actions should take into account the many different roles the Fed plays, and that each role should be examined separately.

Regardless of which direction Congress decides to go with monetary policy reform, it is clear that the issue of the Federal Reserve’s role is going to be a part of the national dialogue moving forward. HR 1207 would provide a basis for that discussion. Once we know what the Fed has been up to, we’ll have a better idea of what to do next. Said Paul, “That’s when we’ll have a lot more fun."

An audio recording of the event is available at http://www.cato.org/event.php?eventid=6279.

HR 1207: The Crazy 88

Ron Paul's Campaign for Liberty is reporting that HR 1207 is sitting on 88 cosponsors and counting. This was after a jump to 71 cosponsors yesterday, when Congress returned to session. That's a jump of 33 congresspeople since I last reported on the issue.

Not all of the new cosponsors are listed on the Library of Congress's site yet, but here's the ones that are:

Rep Lucas, Frank D. [OK-3] - 4/21/2009
Rep Lamborn, Doug [CO-5] - 4/21/2009
Rep Ehlers, Vernon J. [MI-3] - 4/21/2009
Rep Bilbray, Brian P. [CA-50] - 4/21/2009
Rep Pence, Mike [IN-6] - 4/21/2009
Rep Manzullo, Donald A. [IL-16] - 4/21/2009
Rep McCaul, Michael T. [TX-10] - 4/21/2009
Rep Cole, Tom [OK-4] - 4/21/2009
Rep Roe, David P. [TN-1] - 4/21/2009
Rep Herger, Wally [CA-2] - 4/21/2009
Rep Bishop, Rob [UT-1] - 4/21/2009
Rep Baldwin, Tammy [WI-2] - 4/21/2009
Rep Olson, Pete [TX-22] - 4/21/2009
Rep Latham, Tom [IA-4] - 4/21/2009
Rep Luetkemeyer, Blaine [MO-9] - 4/21/2009
Rep Doggett, Lloyd [TX-25] - 4/21/2009
Rep Rooney, Thomas J. [FL-16] - 4/22/2009
Rep Massa, Eric J. J. [NY-29] - 4/22/2009
Rep Johnson, Sam [TX-3] - 4/22/2009
Rep Thompson, Glenn [PA-5] - 4/22/2009
Rep Brady, Kevin [TX-8] - 4/22/2009
Rep Smith, Adam [WA-9] - 4/22/2009
Rep Shimkus, John [IL-19] - 4/22/2009
Rep Graves, Sam [MO-6] - 4/22/2009

Those of you doing research will find it helpful to know that David Roe goes by his middle name, Philip. We picked up four more Democrats with this update: Baldwin, Doggett, Massa, and Smith. It's always nice to have Adam Smith on your side on a piece of economics legislation.

Campaign for Liberty believes the number of cosponsors will continue to rise over the next few days.

The Senate version of the bill still has no cosponsors listed on THOMAS.

Tea Party Hijacking

The media has picked up on yesterday's Tax Day Tea Party protests: Tens of thousands rally at tax day 'tea parties.'

The most important bit from the article:

While FreedomWorks insisted the rallies were nonpartisan, they have been seized on by many prominent Republicans who view them as a promising way for the party to reclaim its momentum.

"All you have to be is a mildly awake Republican candidate for office to get in front of that parade," said Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform.

The movement attracted some Republicans considering 2012 presidential bids.

Well, this is problematic, yes? Republican presidential hopefuls are the last thing we needed at these rallies. It needs to be clear that the groundswell of anger in this country isn't being orchestrated by central planners affiliated with any party. Any attempts to hijack that anger must be resisted. Cheers to the San Antonio protest, which allowed no politicians to speak.

Republicans have a serious credibility problem when it comes to the economy. They drove the deficit through the roof for almost a decade. Well, some Republicans were way ahead of the game, but the party establishment basically laughed us off the stage. Did I mention way, way, way ahead of the game?

Sigh. There's another round of protests coming up, this time against the Federal Reserve. Republican leadership isn't really tuned into this issue yet, so hopefully it will be undiluted, and hopefully it will get media coverage as well.

To summarize some points I've made before--tax cuts without spending cuts won't get us out of this. Spending increases won't get us out of this. We need to drastically reduce the size and scope of the government, and we need to reform our monetary system. We need to reform Social Security and Medicare to address massive projected shortfalls, we need to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan immediately, and we need to audit the Federal Reserve. We need to allow bankrupcies and end bailouts.

Until the Republican leadership moves in this direction, it can shut up about the grassroots movement emerging in opposition to Obama.

HR 1207: In Which The Library of Congress is Unreliable

So apparently there were some clerical errors which led to three Democrats being listed as cosponsors of HR 1207 when they were in fact never cosponsors. Bummer.

Scratch Keith Ellison, Henry Waxman, and Louise Slaughter from your list of people who pass the awesome test. The current cosponsor count remains 55, however, since 3 more congressmen have signed on.

Rep Fallin, Mary [R, OK-5] - 4/2/2009
Rep Smith, Lamar [R, TX-21] - 4/2/2009
Rep Westmoreland, Lynn A. [R, GA-3] - 4/2/2009

HR 1207: 9 More Cosponsors, Jefferson's Quran

More cosponsors! How exciting.

Rep Paulsen, Erik [R, MN-3] - 3/30/2009
Rep Gingrey, Phil [R, GA-11] - 3/30/2009
Rep Terry, Lee [R, NE-2] - 3/30/2009
Rep Carter, John R. [R, TX-31] - 3/31/2009
Rep Capito, Shelley Moore [ R, WV-2] - 4/1/2009
Rep Wittman, Robert J. [R, VA-1] - 4/1/2009
Rep Slaughter, Louise McIntosh [D, NY-28] - 4/1/2009
Rep Ellison, Keith [Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, MN-5] - 4/1/2009
Rep Waxman, Henry A. [D, CA-30] - 4/1/2009

This brings the total to 55. The biggest obstacle at this point will be getting enough support from Democrats that Barney Frank (head of the committee to which the bill was referred) and Nancy Pelosi allow it to come to the House floor for consideration. Rep. Paul has said on several occasions that should the bill come to a vote, it would almost surely pass. The challenge is getting it past the gatekeepers.

Meanwhile, Vermont's Bernie Sanders has introduced an identical bill in the Senate. Sanders is an independent who caucuses with Democrats. The Senate version of the bill was introduced on March 16th and referred to the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs.

A word about Keith Ellison: this guy is pretty awesome. He's the first Muslim to be elected to Congress. I don't tend to go for identity politics, but whatever. He's pretty awesome regardless of his religion. He co-sponsored Kucinich's bill to impeach Dick Cheney, for example. The really cool thing, though? For his "swearing-in reenactment photo op" (actual swearing in is done en masse, without any books around) he used a copy of the Quran owned by Thomas Jefferson. Apparently Jefferson picked up a copy while he was studying for the bar.

A word about former member of the House Virgil Goode: all I have to say about this bigot is "Goode riddance." Goode issued a statement on the matter which read in part "If American citizens don't wake up and adopt the Virgil Goode position on immigration there will likely be many more Muslims elected to office and demanding the use of the Quran." Because only Christians are allowed to be "REAL 'MERICANS." Clearly. There are a lot of good reasons to consider closing our borders. Hateful jingoism shouldn't be considered among them. The stinger? Ellison is a natural born citizen.

HR 1207: An Introduction

Congressman Paul has introduced legislation in the house to facilitate an audit of the Federal Reserve by the GAO (the office headed by the Comptroller General). The current law insulates the Fed from any serious auditing. The bill currently has 46 cosponsors.

Rep Abercrombie, Neil [D, HI-1] - 2/26/2009
Rep Akin, W. Todd [R, MO-2] - 3/19/2009
Rep Alexander, Rodney [R, LA-5] - 3/10/2009
Rep Bachmann, Michele [R, MN-6] - 2/26/2009
Rep Bartlett, Roscoe G. [R, MD-6] - 2/26/2009
Rep Blackburn, Marsha [R, TN-7] - 3/16/2009
Rep Blunt, Roy [R, MO-7] - 3/24/2009
Rep Broun, Paul C. [R, GA-10] - 2/26/2009
Rep Buchanan, Vern [R, FL-13] - 3/17/2009
Rep Burgess, Michael C. [R, TX-26] - 3/19/2009
Rep Burton, Dan [R, IN-5] - 2/26/2009
Rep Castle, Michael N. [R, DE] - 3/17/2009
Rep Chaffetz, Jason [R, UT-3] - 3/6/2009
Rep Culberson, John Abney [R, TX-7] - 3/26/2009
Rep Deal, Nathan [R, GA-9] - 3/23/2009
Rep DeFazio, Peter A. [D, OR-4] - 3/9/2009
Rep Duncan, John J., Jr. [R, TN-2] - 3/6/2009
Rep Fleming, John [R, LA-4] - 3/18/2009
Rep Foxx, Virginia [R, NC-5] - 3/10/2009
Rep Franks, Trent [R, AZ-2] - 3/23/2009
Rep Garrett, Scott [R, NJ-5] - 3/5/2009
Rep Grayson, Alan [D, FL-8] - 3/11/2009
Rep Heller, Dean [R, NV-2] (R) - 3/6/2009
Rep Jones, Walter B., Jr. [R, NC-3] - 2/26/2009
Rep Kagen, Steve [D, WI-8] - 2/26/2009
Rep Kingston, Jack [R, GA-1] - 3/6/2009
Rep Lummis, Cynthia M. [R, WY] - 3/19/2009
Rep Marchant, Kenny [R, TX-24] - 3/11/2009
Rep McClintock, Tom [R, CA-4] - 3/6/2009
Rep McCotter, Thaddeus G. [R, MI-11] - 3/19/2009
Rep Miller, Jeff [R, FL-1] - 3/24/2009
Rep Peterson, Collin C. [D, MN-7] - 3/19/2009
Rep Petri, Thomas E. [R, WI-6] - 3/10/2009
Rep Platts, Todd Russell [R, PA-19] - 3/19/2009
Rep Poe, Ted [R, TX-2] - 2/26/2009
Rep Posey, Bill [R, FL-15] - 2/26/2009
Rep Price, Tom [R, GA-6] - 3/10/2009
Rep Rehberg, Denny [R, MT] - 2/26/2009
Rep Rohrabacher, Dana [R, CA-46] - 3/6/2009
Rep Sessions, Pete [R, TX-32] - 3/23/2009
Rep Stark, Fortney Pete [D, CA-13] - 3/26/2009
Rep Stearns, Cliff [R, FL-6] - 3/6/2009
Rep Taylor, Gene [D, MS-4] - 3/6/2009
Rep Wamp, Zach [R, TN-3] - 3/16/2009
Rep Woolsey, Lynn C. [D, CA-6] - 2/26/2009
Rep Young, Don [R, AK] - 3/6/2009

8 of these 46 are Democrats, which is nice, if you care about that sort of thing. I'm of the opinion that the Democrats and Republicans are basically the same party anyway, but I'm pretty sure most people in office disagree, so it says something when a congressperson is willing to look past deeply ingrained prejudices and cosponsor a bill from the opposition.

The bill is very short, only a page or two. I encourage you to look it up at the Library of Congress's website.

Okay, so why should anyone care? Well, for starters, the bill's author predicted the housing crisis in 2003. Check out Congressman Paul's statements before the House Financial Services Committee. Furthermore, the Federal Reserve is at the center of the current economic maelstrom. It's essentially a fourth branch of government and is accountable to nobody. I personally don't believe that we need a central bank controlling the economy, but its hard to debate the subject when no one has any idea what the Federal Reserve has done and is doing. Congressman Paul is the ranking member on Financial Service's subcommitee responsible for overseeing monetary policy--i.e. Federal Reserve actions--and has repeatedly said that the Federal Reserve is more secretive than the CIA (ex. this interview).

I could continue to talk about the role of the Fed in the economy and the ways central economic planning hurts us, but that would only complicate the issue. This is about opening up an exceptionally secretive part of government to Congress and the citizens of the US--and that's something that everyone should get behind.

More on this as it develops.