Congressman Jeb Hensarling’s campaign to end the Export Import Bank will go down in history as a heroic moment in the House, even if big business manages, as it appears to be intent on doing in the Senate, to outmaneuver the Texas Republican. Ending a subsidy must be one of the most difficult tasks in all of government; one could faster find the end of a Mobius strip. So it’s none too soon for Mr. Hensarling to start thinking about how to up the ante.

Our vote is monetary reform. By suggesting it ups the ante, we wouldn’t want to be interpreted as belittling the importance of sticking with the battle against the Exim Bank. The bank is a gall to those who believe in free markets. It is, however, but a symptom of the bigger default — the adoption of a system of fiat money. That is what has detached Congress from an appreciation of the value of the money it has the power to borrow, spend, coin, and regulate.

It’s hard to imagine it’s a coincidence that the Exim bank was originally brought into being not by Congress but by an executive order, signed by President Roosevelt in 1934. It’s a reminder to be wary of any program set up by a process other than legislation. It’s a moment to remember that the skids were greased by an earlier executive order, 6102, forbidding the “hoarding” — that is, in the main, private ownership — of gold. We weren’t immediately into fiat money but we were on our way.

That is the road back for Mr. Hensarling, who chairs, in the House Financial Services Committee, the body that holds the mandate for the constitutional power to coin money and regulate the value thereof. If we were Congress, we’d back Mr. Hensarling to the hilt in his campaign against the Exim Bank. But we don’t mind saying that it’s hard to see that it will be much of a panacea absent some action in respect of the dollar, on which there is already ferment in the Congress.

The Texas congressman, of course, is in the middle of it. His confrontations this month with the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Janet Yellen, were memorable moments of congressional oversight of a runaway institution. We are told that on Wednesday the Financial Services Committee is scheduled to be marking up the Centennial Monetary Commission Act offered by Congressman Kevin Brady. It would establish a formal monetary commission to take a look at the central bank, which is in the first year of its second century of operations; once a century doesn’t seem too obsessive a schedule for reviewing our monetary principles. If sound money were a matter of law, after all, the Exim Bank would be even less logical. Maybe this will be Mr. Hensarling’s next move.