Why Don’t Limbaugh and Hannity Support Ron Paul’s Bill to Audit the Fed?

There is currently a bill to Audit the Federal Reserve before the House and Senate that has bipartisan support and makes sense for all the People of this country yet Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity (among others) never promote it on their shows.  Why is that?

The bill I’m speaking of is HR 1207 (House version) the “Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2009,” aka “Audit the Fed.” and S 604 (Senate version), “Federal Reserve Sunshine Act of 2009.”

For those not familiar with it, watch this short video of Ron Paul, who introduced the bill, discuss the reasoning behind Auditing the Fed:

The first question Limbaugh and Hannity need to answer for themselves is “how have the boom and busts that we have experienced the past few years come about?”

To understand how the Stock Market bubble (and subsequent bursting) came about, I suggest they read “Meltdown” by Thomas Woods, PhD.

Excerpt:

When the New York Stock Exchange closed on October 9, 2007, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was 14, 164.53, the highest close ever.  Thirteen months later on November 20, 2008, it closed at 7,552.29, a drop of 46.7 percent.

The personal dimensions of these busts are always used to justify government intervention, whether creating a “safety net” or drawing up new regulations aimed at smoothing out the cycle that is supposedly inherent in the free market.

But is this really so inevitable?  Is the market economy really prone to such sudden and inexplicable episodes of massive business error, or could something outside the market be causing it?  This is not just an academic question.  The American people, currently suffering as a falling tide lowers all boats, need and deserve the answer.

All politicians and our media drones talk about what to do next, they promise us ways to prevent another meltdown like the one we’re suffering through now.  If they’re going to come close to succeeding, they need to understand the causes of the business cycle.  What causes these violent sings?

If politicians are thorough and honest in seeking out a culprit, they aren’t going to be pleased with what they find at the end of the trail of crumbs.  It’s not “capitalism.”  It’s not “greed.”  It’s not “deregulation.”  It’s an institution created by government itself.”  P.63,64

Of course that “institution” Woods is referencing is “The Federal Reserve.”

For the Housing bubble it would help if Limbaugh and Hannity read “Did the Fed Cause the Housing Bubble?”

Excerpt:

The case against the Fed is straightforward: In an attempt to jumpstart the economy out of recession, Greenspan slashed the federal funds target from 6.5% in January 2001 down to a ridiculous 1% by June 2003. After holding rates at 1% for a year, the Fed then steadily ratcheted them back up to 5.25% by June 2006. The connection between these moves by the central bank, versus the pumping up and popping of the housing bubble, seemed to be more than just a coincidence. On the contrary, it looked like a classic example of the Misesian theory of the business cycle, in which artificially low interest rates lead to malinvestments, which then require a recession to correct.

It’s interesting to note that the 2008 Republican candidate for President that Limbaugh and Hannity were forced to support, John McCain, has signed on in support of the bill, one of only a few Senators thus far, as of 7/15/09.

To show the bipartisan support, MSNBC even did a segment with Ron Paul where the reporter and he were in agreement about auditing the Fed.

Auditing the Fed is what the People want and Congress needs to provide.

So why won’t Limbaugh and Hannity promote Auditing the Fed?  Is it because they never supported Ron Paul’s policies to begin with when he ran for President against their favored warmongering sons?  Policies that all of a sudden Limbaugh and Hannity back like “less spending” and “free markets?”  These media pundits never used those terms while George W. Bush was in office.

If Limbaugh and Hannity really were in the best interest of the People, they would support this Audit the Fed bill and advertise it on their radio shows so at a minimum the Republican Senators can get behind it.  If they don’t, then I’m afraid they will be part of the problem of why we end up with inevitable busts.

So to Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, I only have one thing to say; “You’re either with us or against us!”

It’s also up to you to contact your Congressional representatives and get this bill passed!  They won’t know how to best represent you unless you tell them what’s on your mind….and that you’re “Fed Up!” with the status quo that gives us the same empty promises!

Need further proof that the Federal Reserve needs auditing?  Look no further than to the Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke’s strong opposition to Audit the Fed!

And while you’re at it, call Limbaugh and Hannity and ask them why they don’t support the Audit the Fed Bills:

Rush Limbaugh Radio show: 1 800.282.2882
Sean Hannity Radio show: 1 800.941.7326

To get by screener you have to do a bait and switch. Talk about the topic of the day (Obama’s health care plan), make it appealing and then say hi to your host, then simply ask the question quickly and clearly: “Why don’t you support the Audit the Fed bill?”

Be prepared for a follow-up question. They may actually talk to you!

Talking points:

*There is little to no accountability to the people on the part of the Federal Reserve.
*More than 63% of the House of Representatives support it.
*Anything less than support for this resolution suggests that you are in favor of secrecy and a lack of accountability to the people who pay the bills.
*We pay the tab; we have a right to know where our money is going. Wouldn’t you agree?

UPDATE (and another good talking point): 75% Favor Auditing the Fed according to a new Rasmussen poll. Hat tip to Michael Nystrom at Daily Paul

Related posts from the Fed Up Blog:

  1. Limbaugh and Hannity Still Favor The Fed and War While Most In America Don’t
  2. The Ron Paul rEVOLution, Super Tuesday and “The Message!”
  3. Top 5 Articles of 2009
  4. Left and Right Media Misinforming Public About Auditing the Fed
  5. It’s Not Too Late For Ron Paul!
  • Kerri Rehmeyer
    Hi Joe, I just wrote a blog (it's not published yet so I'll post it here) on exactly why the FED must be audited.

    The Greatest Scam

    The private banking cartel, aka The Federal Reserve, and their sinister shareholder's have gone into a sheer panic and sent their propaganda machine into overdrive. What are they so afraid of? H.R. 1207! This is Congressman Ron Paul's "Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2009". H.R. 1207 has 282 cosponsors in the House and S. 604 the "Federal Reserve Sunshine Act", it's Senate companion bill, has 23 cosponsors in the Senate. Both are gaining support by the day. The FED has even gone so far as to hire former Enron lobbyist Linda Robertson to attempt to counter the facts that are coming out regarding the Federal Reserve. As Senator Bernie Sanders, sponsor of S. 604 pointed out “No matter how intelligent or well-intentioned the Fed chairman and his staff may be, it isn’t appropriate to give a handful of people the power to lend an unlimited supply of money to anyone it wants without sufficient oversight.” Now mind you, most of these cosponsors signed on, including John Cornyn, Kay Bailey Hutchison and Kay Granger, probably not because they are actually interested in transparency of the FED but due to constant pressure from their constituents.

    The Federal Reserve prints up (or conjures up through computer entry) Federal Reserve Notes (FRNs) and lends them to the treasury at interest. The member banks of course receive the interest on these loans (aka the National Debt). Because FRN's are the only acceptable form of payment, and those can only be borrowed from the FED at interest since they have a monopoly over our "money" creation...well, do you see the problem here? It is literally impossible to ever pay off the National Debt under this fiat (backed by nothing) monetary system. No one can say for sure who the actual shareholder's of the Federal Reserve are (it's a secret, of course), but they are most likely the families of the same European aristocracy that our forefathers fought to get out from under the oppressive thumb of in the 1st American Revolution. Is it any wonder our government is starting to look and act more European (totalitarian and socialistic) each day? And remember, the lender is always the master to the borrower. This is how the FED gets our government to do it's bidding. Bank bailouts, anyone?

    On the other hand, the Congress doesn't really want to expose the FED, because they are not only the enforcer of the cartel, but the other beneficiary of the the cartel. Since our "money" is backed by nothing, the FED can make an unlimited supply of it. This allows the Congress and President to borrow as much as they wish to maintain their welfare/warfare state, give out special favors to their cronies and special interests and continue to be re-elected all to the detriment of we the people. They don't outright raise your taxes, but do so through the hidden (but just as harmful) inflation tax. If every man has his price, how do you think that bodes for We the People when the FED has an unlimited supply of "money" with which to bribe elected officials. Every time the FED makes another loan they are diluting the value of every dollar in your pocket. Since its inception in 1913, The Fed has helped to devalue our dollar by over 95%. During the recent economic crisis, it has poured Trillions of dollars into the economy with no oversight, has made secret agreements with foreign banks and governments, and has refused to tell Congress or the American Public who is getting our money.

    Recently, FED Chairman, Ben Bernanke stammered through an interview on PBS' NewsHour. He trotted out the same old lies and excuses claiming that HR 1207 would hand over monetary policy to the Congress, reducing the FED's independence (uuuhhmmm...secrecy) and politicizing their decisions. Bernanke also claims that the GAO “already looks at virtually all of our activities”. This is pure hogwash. There is no oversight whatsoever regarding loans made by the Fed, which is why there has been no indication of the final destination of multiple trillions of dollars in bailout funds. If he were telling the truth he would have said "We can't allow the American people to find out that we have perpetrated the greatest scam in history upon them or they will demand to see an end to us (the FED)." Why anyone listens to this fool is beyond me. Has he been right about anything? Watch this 5 minute video that proves how ridiculously wrong Bernanke has been: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QpD64GUoXw&...

    H.R. 1207, which is 2 pages long, would simply amend existing law to allow the Comptroller General of the General Accounting Office to audit the Federal Reserve Board and its member banks. According to Declan McCullagh of CBS News, "The Comptroller General is a Senate-confirmed official who's also the head of the Government Accountability Office (GAO), a legislative branch agency organized under the U.S. Congress. In other words, we're not talking about a political bomb-thrower, but a veteran civil servant tasked with important oversight responsibilities." It seems to me the Congress is only interested in passing bills that are at least 1000 pages long to intentionally obfuscate the real agenda. They certainly can't claim H.R. 1207 or S. 604 are too long or confusing! It couldn't be any simpler or clearer and they could actually READ the bill in about 5 minutes.

    Their secrets are out finally coming out. Its gone mainstream whether they like it or not. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 75% of Americans favor auditing the Federal Reserve and making the results available to the public! If you weren't aware of this scam, please educate yourself and lets resolve to throw this central banking albatross off our backs.

    Watch the courageous Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC), the 1st cosponsor of S. 604, as he is blocked by Senate Democrat Leadership from having a vote on his amendment to audit the Federal Reserve:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tRQHsXujpo

    Links to the Bills on the The Library of Congress' Website:
    http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d111:HR...
    http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d111:S6...

    For the full story on the FED please see this video:
    http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=66E30E8...

    Audit the FED! End the FED!

    Kerri Rehmeyer
  • Joe
    Ever occurred to you that some conservatives who oppose auditing the Fed are doing so out of good faith? They just think it would make it monetary policy more subject to the influence of government. No true conservative wants Congress to influence monetary policy, including Ron Paul. Whether it would make it less independent is a legitimately arguable point, whether you want to acknowledge that or not. If you want to convert these conservatives, that's the argument you need to reason with them on.
  • Doug Digger Eberhardt
    Joe,

    If I'm understanding you correctly....

    I'm in the camp of living within one's means, a legitimate conservative objective that really hasn't been followed in the last couple of decades. In this sense, Congress hasn't gone far enough. Hannity and Limbaugh are on their shows each day now talking about how the Obama administration is heading our nation towards socialism, but they won't talk about where the money that the Fed via the Treasury is giving God knows who.

    They won't talk about accountability at the source. The will never support anything that Ron Paul has his name on, including H.R. 1233: "Taxpayers' Freedom of Conscience Act of 2009."

    I do agree that no conservative wants Congress to "influence" monetary policy but they too need to be held accountable and haven't been. From approving wars, bridges to nowhere and zero restraints on budgeting leading to massive budget deficits, Congress has been part of the problem. They also approved the Fed intervention (bailout). In October of 2008, I warned of this. Then the Fed just started doing things on their own.

    It is possible that Ron Paul, who has a book coming out called, "End the Fed" has ulterior motives with H.R. 1207. He may have created this bill to expose this blatant attempt by the Fed of not telling anyone where the funds are going, as a means to gather support to end the Fed. I think he knew in advance that a majority of the people weren't happy about the secrecy of the Fed. He has found something that the People can get behind that quite possibly this could snowball into something more. You can bet the release of his book will get more and more people to wake up to fiscal policy and accountability of Congress and the Fed. My book will as well.
  • Doug Digger Eberhardt
    I decided to join Sean Hannity's discussion forum and ask the question why Hannity doesn't support H.R. 1207.

    Here's the questions I asked:

    Why doesn't Hannity support the Audit the Fed bill?

    I'd like to see him support it too, but I think there's more to it than meets the eye. I wrote an article on the subject recently.

    http://fedupbook.com/blog/federal-reserve/why-d...

    Maybe he doesn't want to be associated with anything to do with Ron Paul, the author of the bill?

    Yet over 60% of the House supports the bill and 75% of the American people do according to a Rassmussen poll.

    I'd just like to hear if anyone has heard him even talk about it...

    The result? Click the following url to see:

    http://docs.google.com/View?id=dd8ngkwz_5fcz9v372

    I guess Hannity doesn't like it when he's challenged...
  • Digger
    I recently posted a comment to someone who is continually posting negative comments about Ron Paul's Audit the Fed bill. The person I'm speaking of is James Pethokoukis whose most recent blog criticizing the bill is here:

    http://tinyurl.com/mmtvjz

    He has not yet approved my comment, so I have posted it here:

    Why don’t Limbaugh and Hannity support auditing the Fed?

    http://fedupbook.com/blog/federal-reserve/why-d...

    Because like Pethokoukis, they think that the same Ivy League economists that got us into this financial mess will somehow miraculously, via Fed non-transparency, get us out of the mess when it is the Fed’s actions that got us here and are making matters worse.

    But what about this Federal Reserve? Could it be that Pethokoukis, like Limbaugh and Hannity, is also a neoconservative, war loving “New” Republican with an agenda of keeping the Fed in business so they can go about their imperialistic ways?

    Here’s what Pethokoukis wrote:

    Iraq

    http://www.usnews.com/blogs/capital-commerce/20...

    Iran

    http://www.usnews.com/blogs/capital-commerce/20...

    and Pethokoukis doesn’t understand gold either:

    http://www.usnews.com/blogs/capital-commerce/20...

    Audit the Fed. Over half the House and 75% of the People want it. Give the People what they want!

    - Posted by Doug Digger Eberhardt Your comment is awaiting moderation.
  • Deb Darby
    I don't pretend to understand everything about the Fed. I do understand when Ivy League economists say, "We're concerned". Could be a good thing?

    "Bernanke has explained more than any other Fed President ever did"? What did he hold back?

    If the Fed "supplies all the background information in real time on C-SPAN" - how can that NOT be a good thing?

    http://blogs.reuters.com/james-pethokoukis/2009...
  • Digger
    Hi Deb,

    Couple points...

    First, it was these "Ivy League economists" who got us into this financial mess to begin with as they were the ones who were advising Bush, Greenspan etc. to artificially lower interest rates to stimulate the economy instead of letting free markets do their thing. It was actually the Austrian economists who predicted these boom and bust cycles we have been experiencing. http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/austrian-ec...

    These Ivy Leaguer's know where there bread is buttered. That's why economist Peter Navarro came out recently in calling for voters to approve all of the California ballot measures to increase taxes, which they didn't. The People are getting smarter (finally). Professor's, despite being PhD's, can't go against the establishment and keep their tenure.

    Secondly, this video can give you a good indication of what's really happening (or not happening) when it comes to Federal Reserve accountability: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXlxBeAvsB8 - This clearly shows that the Fed is not supplying all the background information.

    It's no secret that certain companies (Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan etc.) that the Fed favors are receiving funds, but how is that they receive funds over other, more deserving, profitable companies? http://www.motherjones.com/bailout/2009/06/big-...

    Is it fair that some companies get bailed out over others? Especially the one's that couldn't make it on their own? Well, maybe it is if they get the right person to convince congress to vote in their best interest: http://www.thesunnews.com/558/story/989143.html...

    Pethokoukis is just a guy trying to earn his honor badge with the elitists of late by trying to criticize Ron Paul's audit the Fed bill. Over 280 congressmen support the bill and 75% of Americans. Give the People what they want. The bottom of the cycle will come sooner than later, but at least we can get beyond it and give retirees more to retire on instead of less. The Fed needs to be held accountable for their actions and an after the fact audit is the first step. They'll at least know that what they say will be scrutinized which presently its not.
  • Digger
    Barron, No attention indeed! Like your site, "http://unelected.org" and your support of Austrian Economics.
  • Because the people who give them talking points don't want them to bring more attention to HR1207 and S604.
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