The Centennial Monetary Commission, which a number of us reckon is the best vehicle for nursing the idea of monetary reform in the Congress, just picked up another sponsor in the Senate. Rand Paul of Kentucky has joined Senator Cornyn of Texas, who was the first senator to get behind the bill as a sponsor. The measure, which would set up a bipartisan group to take a look at what the Federal Reserve has wrought in its first century, was launched in the House by the chairman of the Joint Economic Committee, Kevin Brady, also of Texas, and has picked up more than two dozen sponsors there.

The accession of Dr. Paul to this campaign is good news, because the measure needs to be nursed in the Senate. Govtrack.us, a Web site that trans-scopes the prospects for legislation, puts the chances of the measure “getting past committee” at 1% and of being enacted at “0%.” To which we can but say “no guts, no glory.” In other words, it’s a situation made for Rand Paul’s capacity to focus on the pith of a political situation and to view things from the perspective of the United States Constitution. We are at the beginning of a long educational campaign to bring this issue to the fore.

Not that logic is lacking. What an extraordinary situation the Fed is in as it begins its second century. Its new chairman, Janet Yellen, is famous for attaching a priority to the second of the Fed’s two mandates, namely the mandate to work toward full employment. We are approaching the three-quarters mark of a presidency, in that of Barack Obama, that has been ruined by the inability of either the Federal Reserve, the executive branch, or the Congress to bring down unemployment below what it was when the so-called “dual mandate” was established.

In that campaign, despite a multi-trillion-dollar expansion of the Fed’s balance sheet, it’s been six loooong years of zilch. With unemployment in a reduced work force now edging below 7% no doubt the administration is going to try to credit the Fed. But at what cost? And when will we know it? Chairman Bernanke’s most famous utterance was his vow — in response to a question from Scott Pelley of CBS — that “We could raise interest rates in 15 minutes if we have to.” We wish Mr. Bernanke a long and happy life, but predict that will be his epitaph. It seems that every time the Fed wants to end its quantitative easing, there’s some new excuse. The latest is the confounded Europeans.

Out of this, we believe, will emerge the logic of monetary reform and the progressive nature of the idea of sound money. At the end of the day, this can only come through Congress. It created the Fed. It created the dual mandate. Congress is the only recipient of the grant of power to coin money and regulate the value thereof and of foreign coin. If reform can come only from Congress, the measure onto which Rand Paul has just signed is the likeliest vehicle. Not the only one but the likeliest one. One thing Dr. Paul has already shown is that he is a genius for putting an issue before the public.