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Ahead of an expected vote, Federal Reserve officials are lobbying lawmakers against an amendment proposed by Independent Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders calling for an audit of the central bank. The Huffington Post news website recently obtained the documents that were distributed to Senators from an anonymous source within the Fed. The disclosure reveals a central bank strategy of lobbying for the competing Corker-Merkley provision in Senator Chris Dodd’s Financial Reform bill over the Sanders amendment. Vehemently opposed by the Fed, the outlined changes in the Sanders version would allow for the Government Accountability Office to conduct an audit of how much assistance financial firms received from the two trillion dollars of taxpayers’ money loaned out during the financial crisis. The lobbying effort by the central bank argues that giving the GAO such authority casts an undue political influence over independent monetary policy. The Fed is also trying to make its case for continued secrecy on the basis that naming the firms in public would create a stigma that would make financial institutions reluctant to borrow from the bank in the future. Enjoying bipartisan support, Senator Sanders informed reporters yesterday that he believes his amendment would require sixty votes in the Senate to be passed due to the opposition it faces. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and the Obama administration have both come out in public against the audit of the Fed as proposed by the Senator.

GUEST: Thomas Ferguson, professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts, Boston and a senior fellow at the Roosevelt Institute.