Senator Shelby caught trying to water down bill

Senate Banking Committee Chairman Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn, talks with the
Committee's Ranking Republican Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala. (AP Photo/Manuel
Balce Ceneta)

There may be a Senate effort to water down efforts to conduct a full audit of the Federal Reserve. Not by Democrats, but by two ranking Republicans.  One of them is from Alabama.  The Huffington Post reports:

Thanks to an overlooked document posted on the website of Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, the top ranking Republican on the Finance Committee, voters can virtually watch the water being dumped into the brew that Grassley had hoped to force the Fed to drink. (See the document at the bottom of this story.)

On page five of Grassley's amendment, he intends to give the Comptroller General of the Government Accountability Office power to audit "any action taken by the Board under...the third undesignated paragraph of section 13 of the Federal Reserve Act" -- which would be almost everything that it has done on an emergency basis to address the financial crisis, encompassing its massive expansion of opaque buying and lending.

Handwritten into the margins, however, is the amendment that watered it down: "with respect to a single and specific partnership or corporation." With that qualification, the Senate severely limited the scope of the oversight.

On the Senate floor, Grassley named the top Republican on the banking committee, Richard Shelby of Alabama, as the man pouring the water.

"Although I would have preferred to include all of the Fed's emergency actions under 13(3), in consultation with Senator Shelby I agreed to limit my amendment to actions aimed at specific companies," said Grassley.

The Federal Reserve has a considerable amount of influence over our fiscal status, but there is no tranparency of their actions.  It's so vital that a full audit be conducted that 186 House members (UPDATE: currently 222 cosponsors) have co-sponsored the bill already.  The way I see it, "partial audit" makes about as much sense as a "partial virgin".

Please contact Senator Shelby and Senator Grassley and let them know we demand a full audit of the Federal Reserve.

Senator Grassley
(202) 224-3744
E-mail

Senator Shelby
(202) 224-5744
E-mail

UPDATE: To be clear, the bill this article mentioned was Amendment 1021 to S896.  The Senate companion bill to The Federal Reserve Transparency Act (HR1207) is S 604.  When you call, please urge both Senators to support S 604. 

UPDATE II: It's now being reported that Senator Jim DeMint is cosponsoring the bill.