House Finance Committee actually did something!

The Washington establishment suffers a serious defeat
By Glenn Greenwald

Something quite amazing happened yesterday in Congress: the House Finance Committee -- in a truly bipartisan and even trans-ideological vote -- defied the banking industry, the Federal Reserve, the Democratic leadership, and mainstream Beltway opinion in order to pass an amendment, sponsored by GOP Rep. Ron Paul and Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson, mandating a genuine and probing audit of the Fed. The Huffington Post's Ryan Grim has the best account of what took place, noting:

In an unprecedented defeat for the Federal Reserve, an amendment to audit the multi-trillion dollar institution was approved by the House Finance Committee with an overwhelming and bipartisan 43-26 vote on Thursday afternoon despite harried last-minute lobbying from top Fed officials and the surprise opposition of Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who had previously been a supporter.

Heads up!

Incoming:

13,000 lucky Americans will soon receive letters from the IRS explaining that they've been selected for a random audit. The hapless participants are rounded up as part of the IRS' National Research Program, which seeks to explain why the Treasury receives $300 billion less than we Americans collectively owe. A random audit is nothing to fear, unless you are a tax cheating yutz.

Not that I don't completely trust the IRS with my life... but just how random will this be?
Would be interesting to see how many rich/poor, bloggers/mouthbreathers, Republicans/Democrats come up on the random choices.

Henry Waxman: On your mark...

Get set....
"WAXMAN: It seems to me our top priority as the chief investigative and oversight committee is to make sure that taxpayers' funds are no being wasted, that there's no fraud and abuse. These are the taxpayers' dollars, and what we've seen so far in Iraq, according to the government's own auditors, is billions of dollars that have gone to waste and corruption and graft. We're going to look into that more carefully. Only a small part of the money spent in Iraq has been audited, but what we've seen is very, very frightening."