Senate Republicans revised sweeping legislation to regulate cryptocurrency to appease Democrats’ concerns about federal officials profiting off the industry, but it may not be enough to overcome a filibuster.
The Digital Asset Market Clarity Act is scheduled for a test vote on Tuesday afternoon after more than a year of bipartisan negotiations on how to regulate cryptocurrency. It will take 60 votes to stop a filibuster and begin debate on the bill.
Several Democrats said Monday the changes did not go far enough to earn their support.
“It doesn’t do what it needs to do on ethics or on illicit finance or on protecting community banks, so I don’t see how it has the votes,” Sen. Tina Smith, Minnesota Democrat, told The Washington Times.
Negotiations on the Clarity Act, the shorthand name for the bill, have dragged out for months over a myriad of provisions. But the key hangup has been Democrats’ demand for ethics provisions that would prevent President Trump and other federal officials from profiting off cryptocurrency.
The lead Republican sponsors of the bill say they have made numerous revisions to address Democrats’ concerns – including additional ethics changes released late Sunday – and it is time for them to take yes for an answer.
“President Trump had already agreed to the toughest ethics restrictions on federal officials in American history to get this bill done. Now, to close the deal, he went further — including giving state attorneys general enforcement power,” Wyoming GOP Sen. Cynthia Lummis said in a series of social media posts about the bill.
She warned a no vote effectively “kills the toughest ethics reform this country has ever put on the books, kills consumer protections for every American holding digital assets, and hands the future of this industry to our foreign competitors.”
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the top Democrat on the Banking Committee, called the ethics provisions “a weak fig leaf.”
“First, it makes sure that the law could never be enforced against Donald Trump because it gives his political appointees the power to turn off enforcement of all of these ethics provisions,” she said. “Second, it contains major loopholes designed to allow President Trump to keep earning billions of dollars from his crypto business.”
The weekend revisions to the bill include provisions giving state attorneys general the ability to enforce its prohibitions on federal officials issuing, sponsoring or maintaining a significant financial interest in a digital asset.
Officials who already own or invest in cryptocurrency must divest their financial interests or place them in a blind trust. Failure to do so could subject them to monetary penalties of up to $500,000.
Democrats said the bill gives Mr. Trump’s attorney general the sole discretion on whether to bring enforcement action. State attorneys general are only empowered to sue him to try to force such action but cannot directly go after the president or others for violations.
They also pointed to a provision that allows the Office of Government Ethics, also led by Trump political appointees, to unilaterally shut down any state lawsuit.
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