Congress forcing the Fed to collect transaction fees

MarketWatch: The bill would be partly financed by use of Federal Reserve surplus funds, as well as a cut in the dividends that commercial banks that own the Fed receive. It does not raise the 18.4-cents-a-gallon federal gasoline tax.

The American Bankers Association ripped the dividend cut, which would be applied only to banks with more than $10 billion in assets.

“Banks shouldn’t be used like an E-ZPass to pay for highways,” said Rob Nichols of the ABA. “Dramatically reducing the dividend rate — without hearings, consultation with committees of jurisdiction, study or analysis of any kind whatsoever — is extremely bad public policy,” said Nichols, the group’s president.

The bill would also let the U.S. take away passports from Americans who owe the Internal Revenue Service more than $50,000 in taxes.

Cut to the chase.

The key passage is the part about DC po;iticans raiding the Fed's capital account.  Bernanke talked about this.   That capital account is simply a buffer used to smooth the flow of interest rate subsidies Congress gets.  Why does Congress get interest rate subsidies?  Because Congress can no longer afford the rental cost of ink and paper, so the Fed is acting as a fee collector, making the debt cartel pay more of the transaction costs..

Technology has reduced the transaction costs of counting stuff.  Get on the web, do a earch, the search engine gives an accurate coun t of stuff.  Automate the search words, encrypt them, add a probability measure called price, and do all that in the secure SmartCard.