Self-described budget hawk Doug Lamborn not only wants to hang on to taxpayer dollars he wants to ensure that they are always and forever greenbacks.
The Colorado Springs congressman has joined with U.S. Rep. Michelle Bachmann and 31 fellow hard-right Republican co-sponsors to protect our nation’s God-given right to its own ugly currency and jars full of loose change.
Here’s Bachmann explaining the urgent need for a Constitutional Amendment to prevent the U.S. from converting to foreign funny money as legal tender:
Matthew Ygelsias at Think Progress offers a reality-based explanation on Bachmann and Beck’s incoherence on the currency conspiracy theory:
This falsehoods here are coming so fast and loose that it’s hard to know where to start here. But to get to the main point, most countries hold “reserves” of various kinds—foreign currency and gold. Most countries, right now, primarily hold dollars. Euros are also popular, and Yen and British Pounds somewhat less so. The United States of America does not, obviously, hold any dollars in our reserves. We actually have quite a lot of gold. And different countries vary their practices in this regard. But most countries mostly hold their reserves in dollars. So the dollar is, in effect, the “global reserve currency.” The [International Monetary Fund (IMF)] also issues something called Special Drawing Rights (SDR) hat countries can use as a reserve asset. SDRs work as a kind of meta-currency, with their value based on a basket of major world currencies. A Chinese official suggested that it might be good for the world to tilt away from such a heavy reliance on dollars as the reserve currency of choice, since this leaves countries exposed to policy decisions in the United States, and toward something more SDR-like that would be balanced among dollars and euros and yen and pounds and so forth.
This has nothing to do with replacing the dollars in your bank account — or Michele Bachmann’s — with a new currency. Nor would it be the creation of a One World Currency. And to be clear, while the United States could prevent the IMF from formally creating any kind of new internationalized reserve currency, there’s nothing we can do to stop foreign countries from weighting their reserve baskets away from dollars. It’s just not up to us.
Better dead than Red, comrade.
