Our politics are hopelessly divisive. Republicans are standing in the way of progress just for political posturing. Democrats are standing in the way of reform. Racial tension is moving up. Religious tension is moving up. The gap between the rich and the poor is widening. Big money is trumping big labor — or is it the other way around? In any event, Congress can’t agree on a budget, a war, immigration, abortion, same-sex marriage, taxes, or spending. The Democrats and the Republicans can’t agree on anything.

Or can they?

Well, it seems there is one thing. They seem to agree that the time has come to do what Congressman Ron Paul has been seeking for years — a full congressional audit of the Federal Reserve. The law he has been nursing to require such an audit, known as H.R. 459, has just passed out of the House Oversight Committee and gone to the full congress on a vote that was unanimous. Forgive us, but the news reached us on vacation as we were trying to teach a dog to swim, and we nearly dropped the pooch in the pond. Dr. Paul’s bill moved out of committee on a voice vote and without significant opposition from either party.

Now, one unanimous committee vote doesn’t a law make. But what a remarkable turn of the tide in respect of Congress and the Federal Reserve. Only a few years ago the idea of a full audit of the Federal Reserve seemed like a radical position, favored only by idealistic outliers like Dr. Paul. When, a couple of years ago, he got an audit to a proper vote, it was so watered down that even he was against it. What this bill does is remove various restrictions that had been finagled into the last audit-the-Fed law, according to a dispatch issued today on Reason magazine’s Web site.

The previous attempt to audit the Federal Reserve was watered down so as to block the audit from including transactions for or with a foreign bank, government, or “nonprivate international financing organization”; deliberations, decisions or actions “on monetary policy matters, including discount window operations, reserves of member banks, securities credit, interest on deposits, and open market operations”; transactions “made under the direction of the Federal Open Market Committee”; or any discussion or communication among directors or employees of the Fed related to any of those items. It would be like auditing General Motors but excluding anything that had to do with cars.

The bill offered by Dr. Paul, and a companion bill offered by his son, Senator Paul, in the upper chamber, would just remove all those restrictions on auditors of the Fed and require an audit to be completed this year. Whether the measure will prosper in the Senate, this is hard to judge at the moment. But it is not hard to suggest that the bi-partisan nature of the vote on which the measure cleared the Oversight Committee in the House is an encouraging sign. It seems that, at least in the house, Congress has begun to see through the protestations that such an audit would somehow impinge on the independence of the Fed.

And no wonder. It is absurd, after all, to think that the Fed ought to be independent from the branch of government that created it and before whom its chairman is required to testify. Or from the American people. And, more substantively, that it should be immune from an audit on the eve of its centenary. In the first century of the Fed’s existence, the dollar has lost nearly all of its value. It is not much more than half of what it was when President Obama acceded, and little more than a sixth of what it was worth when President George W. Bush took office. No wonder that when this vote finally cleared the House Oversight Committee, it was without vocal opposition.

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It’s not only the full House and the Senate that will decide the fate of this bill. Where does Governor Romney stand? The Web is full of chatter on the issue, including speculation that the presumptive Republican nominee is prepared to put Audit-the-Fed into the Republican platform. Right after endorsing Mr. Romney for president, Senator Paul, the congressman’s son, insisted in a television broadcast that Mr. Romney is a supporter of a Fed audit. If so, the question becomes whether Mr. Romney is prepared to play a leading role on the biggest issue facing our economy. Auditing the Federal Reserve, after all, is not simply bringing some transparency to the Fed, although it is certainly that. It’s also about coming to an understanding of the failure of our national experiment with fiat money. It’s about illuminating the importance of returning to a system of sound money and money based on specie. What a remarkable moment it is that the first step on this road to reform has been taken by the key congressional committee on a vote that is unanimous.