Sen. Rand Paul, a Republican from Kentucky, has been unsuccessful in prior attempts to pass his so-called Audit the Fed legislation calling for a Government Accountability Office review of the Federal Reserve.

It looked like Paul might be on the cusp of getting the measure approved with Republicans in control of Congress and the White House and given Donald Trump’s criticism of the central bank during the presidential campaign.

But trying to get the measure a vote on the Senate floor this week has proved difficult for Paul. He is attempting to attach the measure to a bank deregulation bill expected to pass the Senate next week. In an interview with MarketWatch, Paul said “there were some rumors we were going to get [a vote], and then there were rumors today that we might not. So it is kind of hard to tell.”

Instead of pointing fingers at Republican leadership, Paul vented his frustration at the U.S. central bank, which he said is the only obstacle standing in the way of the audit bill. Analysts don’t see much hope for Paul’s measure. They point out that the bank bill is a fragile compromise between Senate Democrats and Republicans, so amendments such as Audit the Fed might get voted down to preserve the bipartisan deal.

Still, Rep. Jeb Hensarling, the chairman of the House Financial Services panel, wants the Senate to take the bill to a conference, where he can try to attach some of the two dozen bank-deregulation measures, including an Audit the Fed bill, that have passed the House. MarketWatch interviewed Paul on Thursday as the Senate took a break from consideration of the bank bill, putting off deciding on the more than 100 amendments, until next week.

MarketWatch: You’re trying again to get a vote on your Audit the Fed bill. Are the stars aligned this time?

Rand Paul: It is an incredibly popular bill with the public. When we’ve done public polling, 70 to 75% of the public thinks that auditing the Federal Reserve would be a good idea. In the House, I think the last time we had a vote it was 333 votes, an incredible bipartisan support. The Senate last time we got 53 votes. I don’t know. I think it is hard for people to argue against transparency. The main people arguing against it are the people for whom we would be providing oversight. I think people ought to take [it] with a grain of salt when a creation of government says they don’t want more oversight. In fact, it should make us a little more suspicious that we need the oversight when the main voice on Capitol Hill is actually the Federal Reserve saying they don’t want to be audited. So we’ll see whether we have the votes or not, or whether they will let us have an amendment. You never know whether you are going to get a vote on an amendment until it actually happens.

MarketWatch: The main thrust of your legislation would allow the GAO to audit the Fed.

Paul: It would be a complete annual audit looking back at the previous year. Basically it would be an audit of all aspects of the Fed, including what they own. Probably one of the more startling things is the Fed will say that they are already audited, and that is kind of disingenuous, is the best way you can put it. The GAO auditor was before a House committee a few years ago, and they say, “Well, you’re the auditor and you perform the audit,” and she said yes, and they said, “Well, what does the Fed own? They have $4.5 trillion of assets — what are these assets?” and they said, “Oh, we don’t audit that.” It is like, what do you audit, how much coffee they purchased, what their salaries are, their expenses? It is kind of ridiculous and really unfair to say they are audited, when an audit would be what are your activities, what do you buy and sell, and what are they really worth? Because I think for the confidence of the nation, we would want to know what their assets are worth, are they marked-to-market, who did they buy them from, what did they pay for them. And we’ve had an audit before. We had an audit after the crisis in 2008, and we learned some startling things, but the world didn’t end. You didn’t see a collapse of the stock market SPX, +1.59% DJIA, +1.33% or anything else because they shed some sunlight on what they do. I think no government agency should be above being audited.

MarketWatch: So the GAO audit would be similar to what any other government agency would experience?

Paul: Right. It would be a complete audit of everything they do — including what they purchase, what they buy, what they sell. And I think that is not unreasonable to ask. And, really, the only constituency in the country opposed to it is the Federal Reserve. But, they are the ultimate of insiders, and they have a great deal of influence in Washington, so every year they come and basically mislead Congress by saying, “Oh, we already have audit,” which is not really true.

MarketWatch: So the Fed has the clout to stop it?

Paul: Well, there is a majority of us for it — I think we had 53 [Senate] votes for it two years ago, and 333 in the House, so, really, a majority of Washington is for it, and a vast, overwhelming majority of the people are for it, but this is like anything else where there are people in Washington, particularly insiders who are thwarting the will of the people, and so we’ll see. The first battle is getting a vote. And if we get a vote on it, then the second aspect of that battle is trying to win the votes. You have to have a supermajority in the Senate to win, and so we may have to get to 60 to actually get it on the bill, but the bill is a pretty popular bipartisan bill that could pass, so this would be a perfect vehicle for Audit the Fed.

MarketWatch: You voted against Jerome Powell to be Fed chairman. Why?

Paul: He was a huge opponent of auditing the Fed. So that. And I am not so sure he is leading in a much different direction than Janet Yellen, and I was opposed to the direction she took things.

MarketWatch: And you think the president would sign Audit the Fed legislation?

Paul: Sure, absolutely. Particularly since the underlying bill is actually doing some regulatory reform that I think he would support. But he also supported in the campaign Audit the Fed, as well.

MarketWatch: Some former Fed officials are getting more comfortable with the idea of a GAO audit. Andrew Levin, a former Yellen aide who now is a professor at Dartmouth College, has a reform plan that would allow the audit, if certain monetary-policy decisions were carved out. Could you live with that?

Paul: We’d really like to have sunlight on all of it. And the decisions they make, the monetary-policy decisions — yeah, sure, we’d like to see all of it. We don’t have to see it the day it happens. But looking back at it over the previous year, it is hard to imagine how looking back at people’s decisions would really influence things.

Read:House Republicans get boost from former Fed insider in push to reform the Fed.

Usually markets like information. Markets get more spooked by lack of information, or a secretive nature. So I think the markets will tolerate this fine. We have all kinds of audits. Everything that is bought and sold in the marketplace is sort of being continuously audited by people trying to determine its valuation. Corporations are very public. And then people sift through and see if they believe the corporate balance sheet, as well. I think it is the same way for government. But I see no reason [that] the government should be immune to that.

MarketWatch: Fed officials were also worried that a prior version of Audit the Fed would allow any member of Congress to demand an audit, at any time. An annual audit might be more acceptable.

Paul: I think that’s what we ask for basically. And the thing is, if anybody were ever willing to work with us, we would actually be more than willing to codify exactly how often it happens. I think in the bill it actually does say that [it] is only an annual audit that looks backwards.

MarketWatch: So maybe that would alleviate some concerns.

Paul: We haven’t had honest debate with anybody on it. To tell the truth, government should not be lobbying government to not have oversight, and so really it is insulting that the Federal Reserve gets involved with this at all. Because they are not objective. They are an entity created by government, and the Constitution gave Congress the right to oversee the monetary system. The Fed is a creation of Congress and really should be overseen by Congress. It doesn’t mean it has to be political. But it does mean that we should have some transparency. And, really, if they want to stave off more congressional interference in their potential powers, they ought to acquiesce to an audit. Because I think the people over time are beginning to be fed up with the Federal Reserve

MarketWatch: To be fair, some of you rhetoric about the Fed is pretty harsh — that it’s “secretive” and “out of control” agency.

Paul: If you look at what’s happened in recent history — for example, the crisis we had in 2008, the housing boom and then the eventual housing bust — I think there is a strong argument for it being entirely the Federal Reserve’s fault. Why did people keep building houses? Why was there a boom in housing? Because interest rates TMUBMUSD02Y, 0.132% were low. Why wasn’t there a self-correcting mechanism? Because the Federal Reserve didn’t let interest rates respond. You know, the price of money should be mobile. It should go up and down based on demand. And when it does, it sends a signal to the marketplace whether you are overbuilt or underbuilt or whether it should be harder or easier to get a loan. But if you keep the interest rates fixed because you are trying to basically either stimulate the economy or you are trying to make it easier to pay off large government debt, you get misallocation of resources. People make bad decisions, and there is no self-correcting mechanism. The interest rates are probably the most important price in the entire economy because every transaction involves money, and a great deal of transactions involve borrowed money. I very strongly believe interest rates need to go up and down freely, and the Federal Reserve has been a big part, if not the primary mover, [of] the boom-and-bust cycle.

MarketWatch: It seems like you’re letting people off the hook if you say the housing bust was all the Fed’s fault.

Paul: No, I think really the only thing universal is the money — the manipulation of the money because a lot of people misinterpreted that — and there were a lot of people who wrote way back when, “Oh, it was due to greed and stupidity.” And it is like, did people just all of a sudden become greedy in 2007? Did they just become stupid in 2007? No, really, people were always self-interested. You can argue how smart people are, but why would people all congregate in one behavior and one industry and all become greedy and stupid at one time. It makes absolutely no sense. The only thing that was common would be the monetary policy that led people to make bad decisions. People make bad decisions, but usually they are punished for their bad decisions. What we did is we had alarming things go on, and there were some other people who were complicit, but I would say they were primarily in government, people who were encouraging the idea of having loans to people who didn’t have any money. It really had nothing to do with the marketplace. It had to do with the government’s intervention in the marketplace — both with the Fed and with housing policy.

MarketWatch: We just had a report on our website, where your father was warning about a 50% selloff in stocks and putting the blame at the feet of the Fed for its easy policy. Do you agree?

Paul: I have no idea when there will be a correction. I do share the view that the stock market is inflated or that we’re in a boom cycle in the stock market. It is the same sort of problem. You have interest rates that are kept below the market rate. And so money flows into different places. Before it flowed into housing. Now there is an argument to be made that there is money that has flowed into the stock market based on this easy-money policy. And so, yes, I do think there will be a correction.

Read: ‘There’s not stopping it,’ warns Ron Paul: A ‘calamity’ could cut this market in half

The countervailing argument to that is that we just had a $3 trillion injection of private money back into the economy from the tax cut and repatriation. So I think in the short run the stock market could well go higher. It may still expand because of the tax cut, but ultimately there is always a correction, and the correction is made worse by government and Fed policy. There is a time when we will have to correct.

MarketWatch: A reckoning?

Paul: Yes. At some point. If I knew when, I’d be a lot richer.