2.

Findings; purposes

(a)

Findings

The Congress finds as follows:

(1) Nearly 15,000,000 Americans are currently unemployed, another 12,000,000 estimated Americans are underemployed, wages are stagnant and millions of Americans are being asked to take pay cuts.

(2) Over 43,000,000 Americans live below the poverty line, 49,000,000 of Americans go to bed hungry at night, and an estimated 3,000,000 Americans are homeless.

(3) An all-time high of over 1,500,000 non-business bankruptcies were filed through June, 2010, and the small business failure rate in America recently hit 12 percent.

(4) More than 2,000,000 homes have been lost to foreclosure and millions of homeowners are falling behind in their mortgage payments; the housing market in terms of construction and sales has undergone an historic decline; and the declining value of housing means Americans’ largest single investment, the home, is no longer a safe harbor for savings, nest eggs, social mobility or the transfer of generational wealth.

(5) Notwithstanding recent passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, a privatized health care system has made quality health care beyond the reach of most Americans.

(6) The cost of higher education has put higher academic attainment outside the reach of millions more young Americans, and the current generation of young Americans will not be able to attain the quality of life of their parents, reversing a long-standing trend.

(7) Retired Americans are losing confidence that employment levels will be sufficient to ensure Social Security will have resources to guarantee 100 percent of the promised benefits. A mechanism is needed to assure retired American’s of Social Security’s viability.

(8) The American Institute of Architects has estimated that there are $3 trillion in unmet infrastructure needs. Cities and States, urban and rural areas all have an urgent need to rebuild and repair roads, bridges, railroads, water systems, sewer systems and other infrastructure but lack the necessary funds, bond-issuing capacity and other needs which has led to America’s infrastructure falling into disrepair.

(9) The United States is not financially capable of capitalizing on the burgeoning demand for wind, solar and other renewable energy technologies which reduce the cost of energy and help protect the environment, the continued use of non-renewable energies such as coal and oil create a national security crisis as well as long-term economic vulnerability.

(10) The annual United States trade deficit is $380 billion, and the flow of jobs out of America has been accelerated by trade agreements which have not protected the rights of workers, the environment or human rights.

(11) Tax cuts to top brackets cost the Federal Government in excess of $1 trillion, yet have failed to create significant numbers of new jobs.

(12) The monetary policies of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System have compounded the economic crisis by failing to take decisive action to move the economy forward, Wall Street—which was bailed out by the American people—is not investing its rising assets in Main Street America, and individual investors are beginning to turn away from the stock market.

(13) Some banks, many of which received government bailouts, are not investing in small businesses, nor in the creation of jobs, the private sector is not creating jobs, and in fact most businesses are freezing their employment levels.

(14) The country is stymied by competing forces: a desire to put people to work and an aversion to borrowing money to create programs to do so.

(15) Confidence in the United States’ economic leadership at home and around the world is waning, the value of our currency cannot be securely maintained, and no other path to economic recovery exists which will create the changes necessary to put people back to work, invest in rebuilding America’s infrastructure, i.e. highway, rail, airport, harbors, light rail, communication, shipping, water, sewer, education, and civil defense.

(16) The aforementioned conditions require comprehensive action by the United States Congress to create full employment, invest in America and secure our Nation’s long-term economic, social and political future; and that such action is within our Constitutional right and responsibility.

(17) The authority to create money is a sovereign power vested in the Congress under Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution.

(18) The enactment of the Federal Reserve Act in 1913 by Congress effectively delegated the sovereign power to create money, to the Federal Reserve system and private financial industry.

(19) This ceding of Constitutional power has contributed materially to a multitude of monetary and financial afflictions, including— (A) growing and unreasonable concentration of wealth; (B) unbridled expansion of national debt, both public and private; (C) excessive reliance on taxation of citizens for raising public revenues; (D) inflation of the currency; (E) drastic increases in the cost of public infrastructure investments; (F) record levels of unemployment and underemployment; and (G) persistent erosion of the ability of Congress to exercise its Constitutional responsibilities to provide resources for the general welfare of all the American people.

(20) A debt-based monetary system, where money comes into existence primarily through private bank lending, can neither create, nor sustain, a stable economic environment, but has proven to be a source of chronic financial instability and frequent crisis, as evidenced by the near collapse of the financial system in 2008.

(21) Banks pyramided their value by spending money into existence, greatly inflating the value of bank holdings, inflating the value of their asset bases, enticing unknowing investors to participate in financing schemes like the bundling of subprime mortgages, and ultimately bringing undercapitalized banks and the entire financial system to the edge of ruin, creating circumstances where the taxpayers of the United States were called upon to save the banks from their own imprudent money-issuing practices, misspending and mis-investments. The banks’ ability to create money out of nothing ultimately became the taxpayers’ liability, and raises a fundamental question about a practice of money creation which threatens the wealth of the American people.

(22) Abolishing private money creation can be achieved with minimal disruption to current banking operations, regulation, and supervision.

(23) The creation of money by private financial institutions as interest-bearing debts should cease once and for all.

(24) Reclaiming the power of the Federal Government to create money, and to spend or lend money into circulation as needed, eliminates the need to treat money as a Federal liability or to pay interest charges on the Nation’s money supply to financial institutions; it also renders unnecessary the undue influence of private financial institutions over public policy.

(25) Under the current Federal Reserve System, the persons responsible for the conduct of United States monetary policy have been unaccountable to the Congress and the Nation, have resisted auditing by the General Accounting Office, and have claimed exemptions from some Federal statutes, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964, that apply to all agencies of the Federal Government.

(26) The conduct of United States monetary policy by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, and specifically the failure of Board members to safeguard the financial system against wholesale fraud and abuse of citizens, demonstrates the risks of maintaining a system wherein the power to create and regulate money has been delegated to private individuals who are unaccountable to the People of the United States in any way, even through their representatives in Congress.

(27) The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System has acted unilaterally to create and spend $1.25 trillion for the purpose of acquiring mortgage-backed securities, in disregard for the Constitutional requirement that all Federal Government spending originate in the House of Representatives.

(28) An examination of the historical record demonstrates that the exercise of control by the United States Government over the money system has provided greater moderation in the supply of money and promoting the general welfare, and has been indispensable in times of national emergency for generating resources required to support public investment, provide for national defense, and promote the general welfare, and is therefore superior to private control over the money system.