Rand Paul Just Needs a Handful of Votes for Audit the Fed

Paul Wants Bernie Sanders to Support Him as a Co-Sponsor

By: Elias J. Atienza

Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) is close to getting the 60 votes he needs in order to pass Audit the Fed. Speaking to Kitco News after Freedomfest, Paul was hopeful that he would get another vote soon.

Paul first got a vote back in January, where it received 53 votes of the 60 needed for it to pass, with 44 voting in opposition. Three senators missed the vote, including Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX).

Related: Ted Cruz Doesn’t Show Up for Audit the Fed, Vote Falls Short

Paul acknowledged the difficulty in securing another vote.

“It’s hard to get a vote more than once in a year, so I’ll be lucky to get it after the election,” he said. “But I’m going to keep trying and part of what we need in the Senate is that I need to get more Democrats in the end.”

Senate Democrats voted overwhelmingly to oppose it. Despite being opponents of big banks, Senators such as Elizabeth Warren voted against the bill. In fact, the only person on the left to vote for it was Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Paul believes, that with Sanders’s help, he can get the necessary votes to pass Audit the Fed.

“I asked Bernie Sanders for years to help me with it, and he really was never a co-sponsor. In the end he voted for it. I’ve got to convince him to co-sponsor it, and if he would go out and get five or six Democrats, we might be able to get across the finish line,” Paul said.

Back in 2010, Sanders was the one who introduced an Audit the Fed bill in conjunction with former Congressman Ron Paul. However, Paul criticized Sanders for gutting the bill, saying that he “sold out.”

In addition to voting for Audit the Fed in January, Sanders wrote an op-ed in the New York Times calling for an audit.

“In 2010 I inserted an amendment in Dodd-Frank to audit the emergency lending by the Fed during the finacial crisis. We need to go one step further and require the Government Accountably Office to conduct a full and independent audit each and every year,” he wrote.

The White House is against Audit the Fed, calling it dangerous.