[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 14]
[House]
[Page 21095]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                         FEDERAL RESERVE NOTES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Washington (Mr. Metcalf) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. METCALF. Mr. Speaker, I am certain that U.S. citizens would be 
furious if they realized that each person pays $100 each year to the 
Federal Reserve to rent the paper money we use. Why do we each pay $100 
for the privilege of using Federal Reserve notes when we could use 
United States Treasury currency with no cost at all? If we issued our 
paper money the same way that we issue our coins, we could reduce the 
national debt by $600 billion and eliminate $30 billion out of annual 
payments, interest payments on the Treasury bonds, interest on the U.S. 
Treasury bonds held by the Federal Reserve supposedly to back the 
currency.
  The Federal Reserve notes we use are technically liabilities of the 
Fed. It would be easy to fix this badly broken system. Congress need 
only pass a law declaring that all Federal Reserve notes are officially 
United States Treasury currency. This would relieve the Fed of all 
liability for our paper money, and they would then be required to 
return the bonds that they have held as backing for our currency 
presently.
  We owe it to the citizens of our country to make every effort to 
reduce this foolish and costly burden.

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