A cable this morning from Professor John Taylor of Stanford alerts us to the introduction in Congress of the newest piece of legislation offered in respect of monetary reform. It is called the Federal Reserve Accountability and Transparency Act of 2014.” H.R. 5018 would, as Mr. Taylor describes it in his Web log, require the Fed to adopt a “rules-based policy.” The Fed would make the rules. It would then have to submit them to Congress, and be transparent about whether it is following them. The Sun endorses the measure as a step in the right direction.

Not that we harbor illusions about easy passage of the bill, which was introduced by Congressman William Huizenga, a Michigan Republican. “Potentially important” is how Mr. Taylor described it to us. The measure is all the more significant for the fact that it is part of the wider ferment going in in the 113th Congress over monetary policy. This is happening primarily in the House, though the Senate could catch fire on this issue after the November election. Among measures we’re watching:

Centennial Monetary Commission Act, or H.R. 1176, which is being nursed by the chairman of the House-Senate Jooint Economic Committee, Congressman Kevin Brady, to examine monetary policy since the creation, a century ago, of the Federal Reserve;

Sound Dollar Act, or H.R. 1174, another Brady project, which would, among other things, including on the Open Market Committee more presidents of the regional Federal Reserve Banks, get tougher with the International Monetary Fund, and focus monetary policy on price stability;

Free Competition in Currency Act, H.R. 77, which was introduced by a Republican of Georgia, Paul Broun, and would codify Nobel laureate Friedrich Hayek’s idea of the deantionalization of money by ending legal tender status of United States fiat scrip and open the system to privately-issued competing currencies, and end any tax arising from the spending of gold or silver;

Sound Money Promotion Act, S. 768, offered by Senator Mike Lee of Utah, would exempt from taxation any gold and silver coins declared to be legal tender by either the federal government or any state government, extending nationally the most radical monetary measure to be enacted anywhere in recent years, the Utah Sound Money Act, which makes gold and silver coins legal tender in the Beehive State and removes state taxes arising from spending them.

Federal Reserve Transparency Act, or S. 209, offered by Senator Rand Paul, renews the drive to audit the Federal Reserve launched by the senator’s father, Ron Paul, to audit the Federal Reserve. His father’s measure passed the House by an overwhelming bipartisan vote in 2012 and is being offered by Mr. Broun in the lower chamber in the 113th Congress as H.R. 24.

Scant chance of passage is given to each one of these measures by Web sites that predict such things. One thing we learned in a long newspaper life, however, is a principle summed up by the long-time editor of the Wall Street Journal, Robert Bartley (he is now gone, alas): “Change happens on the margin.” The legislation is marginal only in the sense that all this legislation faces an uphill slog. But the idea of John Taylor, that monetary policy should be subject to rules rather than discretion, is not marginal.

On the contrary, this is American bedrock. As is the idea that Congress ought to be involved. The coinage power — the power to coin money and regulate the value thereof and of foreign coin — is one of the powers most plainly enumerated in the Constitution and most clearly granted to Congress. As are the powers to borrow on the credit of the United States, to tax, and to regulate interstate commerce. Congress has a free hand to assert this power and to lay down the rules by which rules are set. A hearing is scheduled for Thursday, where we hope it will start to be made clear how overdue this measure is.