H.R. 4248: Free Competition in Currency Act

[Guest Fedup]

Free Competition in Currency Act of 2009 - Repeals the federal law establishing U.S. coins, currency, and reserve notes as legal tender for all debts, public charges, taxes, and dues. Prohibits any tax on any coin, medal, token, or gold, silver, platinum, palladium, or rhodium bullion issued by a state, the United States, a foreign government, or any other person. Prohibits states from assessing any tax or fee on any currency or other monetary instrument that is used in interstate or foreign commerce and that has legal tender status under the Constitution. Repeals provisions of the federal criminal code relating to uttering coins of gold, silver, or other metal for use as current money and making or possessing likenesses of such coins. Abates any current prosecution under such provisions and nullifies any previous convictions.

[Guest Tea Party Patriot]

Mr. Speaker, I rise at this time to talk about a piece of legislation that I have recently introduced. That legislation is H.R. 4248. It is called the Free Competition in Currency Act. I believe long term this is a piece of legislation that will play an important role in the monetary reform that will be a necessity if we continue to do what we have been doing with our economy and our financial system.

 

We are in the middle of a financial crisis today. Some people think we have turned a corner, but, quite frankly, I do not believe that has occurred. Recently, though, we have just had the opening bells of an inquiry into what the cause of the crisis has been. It is the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission. It is a take-off of the Pecora Commission that was established in the 1930s to figure out why the crash occurred then. Of course, that commission met and talked to people. They tried to figure out what was the matter. And from my viewpoint, they came down with all of the wrong conclusions. They said that the Federal Reserve was involved, that the Federal Reserve didn't print enough money fast enough and they didn't have a big enough bailout package and they needed a lot more regulation.

 

So they did all of those things for the first time in our history, under the two administrations, the Hoover and the Roosevelt administrations, and they prolonged the Depression. They took a 1-year depression/recession and turned it into a 15-year depression.

 

So I believe what we are going through right now is the same old song and dance. We are doing the same thing again. We have this new inquiry, and the members of the commission are people who didn't see it coming, didn't explain it, and didn't anticipate it. And the people who are coming before the commission, as far as I can see so far, had no anticipation or are acting surprised that the crisis came and that there was a bubble. So I can hardly see any good results coming from this.

 

My position over the many years has been that the Federal Reserve is a dangerous organization because it creates the bubble. Our country would be better off with a strong central bank like the Federal Reserve. I argue from a moral, economic, and a constitutional viewpoint that it has no right to exist and it is very dangerous to us.

 

I am very pleased, though, that one of the pieces of legislation I introduced, H.R. 1207, to audit the Federal Reserve, has met with a large amount of support. We have 316 cosponsors of that bill, and I think that is a major step in the right direction, looking to the Federal Reserve for the cause of our problem: the easy money system, the easy credit, the fixing of interest rates too low.

 

Now, the reason I am addressing this is because I believe the correction has a long way to run and that eventually we will have to have monetary reform. Now, in spite of my position being that we don't need the Federal Reserve, I am not in favor of closing the Federal Reserve down in one day or two. But I do believe the monetary system will close down this government and the monetary system and the Federal Reserve and a lot of other things if we continue on our profligate ways of spending and borrowing and inflating the currency and regulating the currency, and this will get much worse until we have a total collapse of the system.

 

So my bill, what it does is it introduces competition, competition in currencies. The Federal Reserve system and the dollar standard is run by a cartel, a monopoly. They don't allow competition because they know that they can't compete. Just as we have competition in the post office with FedEx and UPS, I think that the Federal Reserve deserves a little competition. The public school system has competition with private schools and it has competition with home schooling. There is no reason in the world that we can't enforce the Constitution, legalize the Constitution and say that we can have competitions in currencies, but there are three major things that we must do to do that, and the bill does this. We repeal legal tender laws and remove the monopoly control of the Federal Reserve. We legalize private mints so mints can mint coins, and they will be controlled by fraud laws and anticounterfeit laws.

 

Today, our government commits fraud and counterfeit by printing money at will. If a private organization did that, they would be imprisoned for the fraud they are causing.

 

But the other important reform that would have to occur for money to circulate and compete against the monopoly control of the Federal Reserve would be to take taxes off money. The Constitution says only gold and silver can be money, only that can be legal tender, so you can't tax it and allow it to be competitive.

 

So these things could occur, and if nobody wanted to use it they wouldn't have to and everybody could be happy with the Federal Reserve. But if the conditions get so chaotic and the people are looking for an alternative, they can go and start operating in another currency.

 

So this to me could provide a smooth transition. It would not be chaotic. It would be legalized in the Constitution. It would be good, sound economics; and, eventually, the most important thing it would do, it would restrain the spending of this Congress, because as long as you have a Federal Reserve over there willing to print up the money any time we spend more money that we don't have and we can't borrow, then the Federal Reserve will accommodate us. Therefore, I argue the case for competition in currency and strictly limit it in government.