RFK Jr. vows to put 'U.S. budget on blockchain' to increase transparency

April 22 (UPI) -- Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he would put the nation's budget on blockchain to increase government transparency and end corruption.

"I'm going to put the entire U.S. budget on blockchain so that every American -- every American can look at every budget item in the entire budget anytime they want 24 hours a day," Kennedy told a crowd Sunday at a rally in Michigan.

Putting the U.S. budget on blockchain would put it into a ledger of transactions associated with Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, allowing American taxpayers to track spending.

"We're gonna have 300 million eyeballs on our budget, and if somebody is spending $16,000 for a toilet seat, everybody's gonna know about it," Kennedy said, referencing reports that the Pentagon paid $640 per toilet seat in the 1980s and $10,000 each to replace toilet seats in 2018.

Last week, Kennedy, 70, qualified for Michigan's 2024 presidential ballot. The environmental lawyer, who is vocally anti-vaccine, has also qualified for the ballot in Hawaii and Utah. His campaign has said that he has enough signatures to qualify for the ballot in North Carolina, New Hampshire, Nevada, Nebraska, Idaho and Iowa.

Kennedy, who originally launched his campaign as a Democrat before switching to an Independent, named California entrepreneur and lawyer Nicole Shanahan as his vice presidential running mate last month, saying she "shares my indignation of big tech" as well as his disdain for "information warfare that our government is currently waging against the American people."

Kennedy, who is running against President Joe Biden with the Democratic nomination and former President Donald Trump with the Republican nomination, is the only presidential candidate to publicly endorse Bitcoin and even accepted Bitcoin campaign donations.

If elected, Kennedy has said he plans to back the U.S. dollar with Bitcoin. He also vowed to end Federal Reserve efforts to move toward a central bank digital currency, claiming it would infringe on privacy and would be "a calamity for human rights and for civil rights."