Rand Paul rages at the Fed's 'attack dogs'
The likely 2016 presidential contender and prominent Fed critic fired off tweet after tweet on Friday blasting "Big Government cronies" pushing back against his legislation that would audit the Fed.
"The Fed's attack dogs are hurling insults yet again. If anything, I'm more inspired to fight," Paul wrote. "It's time to knock down the Fed's wall of secrecy and find out where the endless supply of printed money goes!"
Paul's office did not respond to multiple requests for comment on what, specifically, prompted his tweets. However, one of Paul's later messages slammed the White House for calling his audit-the-Fed legislation "dangerous." This might be a reference to Jason Furman, chairman of Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, who dismissed Paul's "dangerous" bill last week.
The Fed's critics accuse it of unnecessary secrecy, which they say leads to the corruption of US economic policy. Accordingly, Paul's audit legislation aims to make the Fed's regular decisionmaking processes that dictate monetary policy more transparent. However, Paul's critics insist he's leading an irresponsible fight that undermines one of the most important economic institutions in the world. Opponents of the legislation also note the Fed's holdings are all made public and are audited.
Paul has been doing battle with several of the Fed's defenders in recent days. According to The Hill, the Fed is actively lobbying against Paul's legislation. Additionally, Paul and Politico engaged in a notable back-and-forth this week after the news site published a piece that accused Paul of overstating a number of his criticisms of the Fed. On Thursday, Paul did an interview with conservative talk-show host Glenn Beck, who dismissed the Politico article as a "massive hatchet job."
View Paul's full tweetstorm below: