Updated on 09/17/14: The House voted 333-92 on Wednesday to approve the Federal Reserve Transparency Act. Rep. John Campbell of California cast the lone Republican ‘no’ vote. The number of Democrats voting in favor, 106, exceeded the number opposed, 91.



The House of Representatives is expected to vote Tuesday evening in favor of auditing the Federal Reserve banking system.

The proposal, a signature cause of retired libertarian Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, will likely win broad support.

Rep. Paul Broun, R-Ga., is sponsoring the bill – the Federal Reserve Transparency Act – with 228 co-sponsors, more than half of the House's membership. A majority of Republicans and 19 Democrats are on board.

The bill would require a comprehensive audit of the banking system within one year of enactment.

A previous version of the legislation won 327-98 support in July 2012 – despite the defection of eight co-sponsors – but went nowhere in the Senate. Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., supported auditing the Fed in the 1990s, but refused to allow a Senate vote.

“It’s going to be up to the Senate,” Broun tells U.S. News. “The best way to get it put into law is for people all across this country to contact their senators and demand that we pass an 'audit the Fed' bill – if enough pressure is put on all those senators we'll have it on the floor and it will pass."

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., is sponsoring companion legislation in the Senate with 30 co-sponsors.

A partial audit of the Federal Reserve in 2011 ordered by the Dodd-Frank financial reform act found the banking system loaned $16 trillion to financial institutions – including more than $3 trillion to foreign banks – from 2007-2010, infuriating some members of Congress who said there was no public notice or congressional oversight of those loans.

Broun says Congress abdicated its constitutional responsibility to manage the U.S. money supply when it created the Federal Reserve in 1913 and wants to abolish the independent institution.

“Hopefully once the American people see what the Fed has been doing over the last 100 years then they will support getting rid of the Fed and going to sound money policy,” Broun says.

“The biggest issue here is that since the Federal Reserve was established in 1913, the value of the dollar has been reduced by 95 percent,” he says. “When compared to 1913 dollars, our dollar bill today is worth a nickel – that hurts poor people and senior citizens on a fixed income the most, and it’s just got to stop.”

Ron Paul, who has been pushing to audit the Federal Reserve for decades, says “momentum is on our side.”

“It all depends on how much pressure from the grass roots gets put on Reid,” he says.