Senate Democrats blocked a vote Tuesday on legislation from Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., that would have required an audit and greater transparency on monetary policy-making from the Federal Reserve, the powerful central banking system that sets interest rates and manages the money supply.

The bill won near-unanimous Republican support and votes from Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., and Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, who is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, but fell short of the 60 votes needed for consideration.

Measures to audit the Fed have met mixed success since the 2008 economic crisis. The House passed similar measures in 2012 and 2014 and the Government Accountability Office gained some oversight powers and performed an audit pursuant to the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform act.

Sen. Paul's measure would have authorized the GAO to review more information as part of an audit, but opponents said that would give lawmakers too much information and power to exercise oversight.

“We’ll see many members of Congress pushing the Fed to side with the bondholders and Wall Street on combating inflation rather than siding with main street and small businesses and workers in dealing with unemployment,” said Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, who spoke against the bill.

Sen. Paul used similar arguments, however, saying his proposal would in fact benefit the working class to the disadvantage of well-connected bankers, as low inflation and low interest rates have hurt people who aren't at the top of the economic food chain.

"There is a revolving door between the Fed, the Treasury and Wall Street -- a revolving door in a building all-too-eager to enrich big banks and asset holders at the expense of everyone else," he said. "I think that it’s about time we pull back the curtain to uncover this cloak of secrecy once and for all."

In advance of the vote, former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke wrote in a Brookings Institution blog post that "[t]he principal effect of the bill would be to make meeting-by-meeting monetary policy decisions subject to Congressional review" and that too much transparency would allow for "political interventions in monetary policy decisions [that] would not lead to better results."

Bernanke famously was unable to identify during a 2009 congressional hearing the foreign banks that received $500 billion during the economic crisis. "Congress approved it in the Federal Reserve Act [of 1913]," he explained, describing why congressional approval was unnecessary for the loans.

Though the Senate blocked the measure, former Texas Rep. Ron Paul (Rand's father) tells U.S. News the vote "was a tremendous success" because it builds momentum. "We really never expected to overcome cloture," he says.

The libertarian leader was the idea's original champion, making it a key talking point during nationally prominent runs for the GOP presidential nomination in 2008 and 2012. He says opposition to his son's legislation was irrational.

“I can’t imagine anyone voting against transparency. This whole thing that it would be politicized if Congress has something to say about it -- it’s always politicized," he says, "it’s just who’s behind the scenes doing the politicizing. And that’s what they don’t want to know, because the special interests are the political forces that direct monetary policy.”

The elder Paul says Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, a reputed crusader for the working class, “voted with the bankers” Tuesday and lashed out at one of his son's rivals for the Republican presidential nomination, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who didn't cast a vote. "Cruz didn't show up, and that won’t help him because he pretends he’s with us,” he says.

Sanders released a statement explaining why he voted against most Democrats, saying:



“Too much of the Fed’s business is conducted in secret, known only to the bankers on its various boards and committees. In 2010, I inserted an amendment in Dodd-Frank to audit the emergency lending by the Federal Reserve during the financial crisis. As a result of this audit, we learned that an institution that was created to serve all Americans had been hijacked by the very bankers it regulates.

We must expand on that first review of the Fed’s activities. Requiring the Government Accountability Office to conduct a full and independent audit of the Fed each and every year, would be an important step towards making the Federal Reserve a more democratic institution that is responsive to the needs of ordinary Americans rather than the billionaires on Wall Street.”

Former Rep. Paul says he isn't optimistic that reform would come from the potential presidency of GOP front-runner Donald Trump and isn't sure if he would vote at all if Trump is the GOP presidential nominee.

"He made his fortune over fiat money and big banking," he says. "He could not have thrived, he could not have made his money without the Federal Reserve creating a boom in real estate prices," Paul says, adding he more broadly objects to Trump, who he believes panders to people's fears.

Paul says he believes the Federal Reserve transparency measure will one day pass, though he says another economic crash may be required to push it over the threshold for victory.