Authored by Senator Rand Paul and Mark Spitznagel, originally posted at Time.com,

The country deserves to understand the extent of its balance sheet

On Jan. 12, Congress is scheduled to vote on the “Audit the Fed” legislation (H.R. 24/S. 264), which, if passed, would bring to an end to the Federal Reserve’s unchecked—and even arguably unconstitutional—power in the financial markets and the economy.

We aren’t the first to be wary of the powers of central banks. Founding Father Thomas Jefferson viewed the powers of central banks as being contrary to the protections of the Constitution. As Jefferson wrote:

“I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.”

In a similar vein, the great Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises also recognized that limiting government power in the realm of money was a matter of liberty, not merely economics. Mises explained that

“the idea of sound money … was devised as an instrument for the protection of civil liberties against despotic inroads on the part of governments. Ideologically it belongs in the same class with political constitutions and bills of rights.”

How far we have come as a country that these words from Jefferson and Mises sound so foreign today. Perhaps we have all been blinded by the credit and equity bubbles that surround us. But what better wake-up call to rally support for legislation that would shine a bright light on the government institution that today has created these bubbles, subsidizes small subsets of the population (thus amplifying wealth inequality), and enables endless government debt?