The Federal Reserve Bank System has become one of the most important institutions in the American political system, despite being a private entity, completely politically unaccountable to the public.  Through the euphemistically-named “Quantitative Easing,” it has financed a major portion of the record deficit spending of the Obama years, and thanks to the Dodd-Frank bill, it now has significant regulatory power in the financial sector, even beyond the examination of its member banks.

And it is the unaccountable Fed, not Congress, that funds the sweeping powers of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, insulating that regulatory body from democratic accountability to the people’s representatives.

Senator Rand Paul, who will not be on the stage at the Reagan Library Wednesday night for the second GOP presidential debate, has made auditing the Fed a major plank of his campaign. But what of the rest of the GOP field? What do they think of the Fed’s now-dominant role in financial markets, to the point where expectations of Fed actions drive stock market ups and downs?

Among both the GOP and Democrat electorates, anti-establishment candidates have caught fire. There is nothing more establishment and insider than the Federal Reserve System. Yet so far it has remained above the fray in all the discussions of political issues this year. Despite the fact that economic stagnation has gripped the nation for the entirety of the Obama presidency.

It is time to put the Fed on the political agenda, and Wednesday night, with its anticipated huge viewership, would be the perfect moment to do so.