Senator Rand Paul said a Monday visit to Fort Knox confirmed that about 147 million ounces of gold are held there, which he described as roughly half of the U.S. gold reserve. He used the inspection and follow-up posts on X to argue that Americans’ affordability concerns are fundamentally an inflation problem driven by persistent federal deficits, Federal Reserve money creation and the dollar’s long-term loss of purchasing power. Paul said the U.S. runs a roughly $2 trillion annual deficit, claimed the Fed buys about a third of that debt by creating new money, and contrasted that with gold, whose supply does not expand when Congress spends more.