Paul It doesn’t come as much of a surprise that the measure to audit the Federal Reserve is coming under continuous fire from the central bank and its cronies.

For the first time since the Fed was created nearly a century ago, it has hired a lobbyist to pound the pavement on Capitol Hill.

This is a desperate effort to hang on to the privilege of secrecy and lack of accountability it has enjoyed for so long.

About two weeks ago, the Fed showed it is getting its money’s worth in the Senate.

At last minute on the floor of the Senate, supposed compromise language was agreed to and substituted in the Sanders amendment to the financial reform bill.

This language was acceptable to the administration, committee leadership, and to the Fed. The trouble is, while it is better than no audit at all, it guts the spirit of a meaningful audit of the most crucial transactions of the Fed.

In fact, rather than still calling the Sanders amendment an audit, maybe it should instead be called more of a disclosure.

The new language of the Sanders amendment requires a one-time disclosure from the Fed of 13(3) facilities, foreign currency swaps and mortgage-backed securities. Basically, its sins of the past would be revealed and Americans would know more about who got bailed out by the Fed and under what terms. This would be good, but it’s not nearly enough.

Taxpayers are tired of bailing out privileged, dysfunctional institutions that should be allowed to fail to stop their ability to wreak havoc on our economy.

Perpetuating these corporations at taxpayer expense is not just wasteful but actively harmful. It would be good to know what went on, but what about accountability from now on?

A one-time disclosure will not do us much good when the cycle repeats itself and friends of the Fed find themselves in trouble again.

More importantly, agreements with foreign central banks are not touched by the amendment language. At a time when Greece, Portugal, Spain and other countries are experiencing dire financial crises and have their hands out to the international community, we need to know if our Federal Reserve is at all involved in bailing them out.

As weary as we are of bailing out companies, the American people would not stand for bailing out entire countries. Our government is wasteful enough in its own affairs without contributing to the waste of other countries.Yet the Fed has the tools to do just this, and to do it in secret.

If we cannot take away the Fed’s ability to waste trillions of taxpayer dollars on failing companies and failing countries, at the very least, we can take away its ability to do this with no transparency.

Sen. David Vitter has introduced an amendment that contains the audit language that passed the House last Fall. The Senate must pass it for full disclosure and accountability.

Ron Paul represents the 14th Congressional district of Texas.