The Republican sweep offers the new Congress a chance to do a lot of good things, but none is more timely or strategic than monetary reform. Of all the things the Democratic Senate was getting in the way of, it’s the most important. I’d start with “Audit the Fed.” As recently as September, this passed by an overwhelming bipartisan margin in the House, 333 to 92.

The idea is not simply to look at the Federal Reserve’s books (they’re audited every year). It’s to find out what the Fed is doing at home and abroad and how it makes its decisions.The Fed ballooned its balance sheet by trillions to get the economy going after the 2008 crisis, but lengthened the Great Recession by years. Yet the Fed audit couldn’t get to first base in Harry Reid’s Senate. Sen. Rand Paul’s bill is called the Federal Reserve Transparency Act, and it would be a good early priority for the new Congress.

It would be, though, just a starting move on this most important of issues for the US economy. Another bill, the Centennial Monetary Commission Act, is being nursed in Joint Economic Committee, which is chaired by Rep. Kevin Brady, a Texas Republican. This would establish a commission to examine our country’s central bank much more broadly as it starts its second century. Brady insists the commission would be “brutally bipartisan.”

There was little chance of advancing this measure while the Democrats controlled the Senate, which is one reason why it has been stuck in the House. January 2015 is a good time to make another attempt at getting this bill out of first gear. Rep. Brady, incidentally, has another bill, the Sound Dollar Act, that gets a new chance thanks to the GOP sweep, particularly because the terrible economy of the Obama years was the premier issue for the voters.

The legislation would repeal the Fed’s so-called “dual mandate.” This was imposed by the 1978 Humphrey-Hawkins law, which gave the Fed an added job alongside maintaining “price stability,” namely, to create “full employment.” At the time, even the liberal New York Times called the bill a “cruel hoax” on the American worker. The Times later embraced Humphrey-Hawkins, because that cruel hoax turns out to help expand the size of government.

The dual mandate has caused endless woe. Employment issues are properly the concern of Congress and the president, who between them control the taxes and regulations that help or harm job-creation. Passing the ball to the Fed has allowed them to dodge responsibility. Perhaps worse, it has encouraged the Fed to intervene in the economy in ways that inevitably help some Americans at great cost to others.

Fed action since 2008 has kept the stock market, Wall Street and the big banks happy — at the price of stagnation for the “99 percent.” All without bringing us a hair closer to “full employment.” And President Obama’s Fed chief, Janet Yellen, has made “full employment” her key issue. And it’s been death on price stability. Since October 1978, when Humphrey-Hawkins was signed into law, the dollar has lost a staggering 79% of its value, as measured in gold.

The Sound Dollar Act wouldn’t bring back the gold standard, but merely bring the Fed’s focus back to protecting the value of the dollar. It would also reform the Federal Reserve in other ways, such as diversifying the Federal Open Market Committee (which runs monetary policy) by adding more presidents of the regional Federal Reserve Banks. So there’d be a lower proportion of PhDs calling the shots, and more people in touch with the real economy.

My own favorite is the more radical Free Competition in Currencies Act, which would end the government monopoly on money and allow the free circulation in the United States of privately issued hard currencies, including money consisting of precious metals, or actual gold and silver coins. Monetary reform isn’t the only opportunity for the new Congress: Tax reform, immigration, gun control and ObamaCare are all on the GOP agenda. But for my money, this is the biggest opportunity. It will get things rolling for the presidential race of 2016.

This column first appeared in the New York Post.