April 19, 2022
The Honorable **CONGRESSMAN**
United States House of Representatives
**ADDRESS** House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
Dear Representative **NAME**,
I am writing to you today on behalf of Campaign for Liberty supporters from all across the United States who oppose any and all attempts by the Federal Reserve to create a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), and urge you to cosponsor legislation to prohibit it.
As you probably know, President Joe Biden signed an Executive Order on March 9 “encouraging” the Fed to continue to “explore” implementing a CBDC, “including development of a plan for broader U.S. Government action in support of their work.” Both the House Financial Services Committee and Senate Banking Committee have held hearings on the matter.
A CBDC would essentially be a cryptocurrency controlled by the Federal Reserve. The dangers of any such currency are undeniable.
First and foremost, a CBDC could be used as a tool for surveillance and control of the American public. This threat was acknowledged last year when three U.S. Senators – Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) and Roger Wicker (R-MS) – asked the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee to prohibit athletes from using the digital Chinese yuan.
“While the Chinese Communist Party insists their efforts are aimed at digitizing bank notes and coins, Olympic athletes should be aware that the digital yuan may be used to surveil Chinese citizens and those visiting China on an unprecedented scale, with the hopes that they will maintain digital yuan wallets on their smartphones and continue to use it upon return,” they wrote.
It would be dangerously naive to think that our own CBDC would not include similar surveillance mechanisms, given the government’s long and sordid history of spying on the American population as a whole, such as the PRISM and ECHELON programs.
Even more insidious is the prospect that Americans’ “digital dollars” might one day be frozen or seized for any number of pretexts. We are already past the point where political actors are comfortable labeling political speech “violence” and those who speak in their opposition “terrorists.”
It is likely that such a system would not even be safe to use. The government’s cybersecurity record is abysmal. The ObamaCare website, for example, was rolled out in 2013 with massive vulnerabilities, exposing the health records of millions of Americans to bad actors around the globe (see the House Science, Space and Technology Committee hearing on November 19, 2013).
For these reasons, I am encouraged by the introduction of H.R. 6415, which would prohibit the Federal Reserve from issuing CBDCs to individuals.
I ask for your cosponsorship of this important legislation.
In Liberty,
Ron Paul
Member of Congress 1976-77, 1979-85, 1997-2013
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