President Donald Trump came into office promising to bring forth a golden age. To that end, he has sought to modernize American industry, expand America’s economy, and make America even more of a center for technology revolutions.
And his pledge on putting America in the lead on digital assets and blockchain technology, which connects all three of those goals, has been at the heart of those efforts.
The Trump administration zoomed in on the passage of two key pieces of legislation: the GENIUS Act and the CLARITY Act. The former was a landmark piece of legislation, the first of its kind in that it set out rules and regulations for stablecoins. That was an America First win Trump achieved this summer with solid, bi-partisan support.
That same week in July, the House of Representatives also overwhelmingly passed the CLARITY ACT, a bill to define the digital asset market structure in this country during what the White House dubbed “Crypto Week.” America was heading towards a major victory in the race to dominate the global digital asset space as Trump had promised.
But instead of running down the field to an easy touchdown, the Senate fumbled the ball on the CLARITY Act. The impact of this failure of leadership could be serious if it isn’t resolved soon.
This isn’t an overstatement: When President Trump called on Congress to pass crypto legislation, he named both bills as critical to his Make America Great Again agenda. That’s because, while the GENIUS Act focuses on stablecoins, the CLARITY Act provides clarity (as per the name) on how the government should regulate digital assets more broadly.
The value is also not found entirely in the trading price of digital tokens. The underlying blockchain technology that powers peer-to-peer transactions of all kinds will be as revolutionary for global commerce as the internet was in the 1990s.
But token prices and “the financial Wild West” is where the left has focused the public’s attention. Stories in the press about people losing hundreds of millions because a hard drive was thrown away by mistake or scammers getting into crypto wallets have given the public the image that there are just no rules.
Enter the CLARITY Act, which seeks to set the rules. The bill would, as House Finance Committee Chairman French Hill (R-AR) said, create “a functional regulatory framework for digital assets.” It would clearly define what a “digital commodity” is and assign their regulation to the appropriate federal agencies so that consumers interests are protected and American companies can get out front of those from other countries with the best and most effective products and services.
Yet, the Senate didn’t take the winning CLARITY Act into the end zone. It veered over the sideline. The shutdown is not to blame here: The GENIUS Act flew through both houses months before the shutdown began. The CLARITY Act also passed the House.
The issue is not partisanship. While the filibuster has killed many a bill, the CLARITY Act – like the GENIUS Act – was built on a bipartisan basis and would certainly get more than 60 votes if the Senate voted on it today.
Unfortunately, it was a fellow Republican – Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) – who has fumbled on President Trump’s agenda. She was given the opportunity to lead on this critical issue and set the CLARITY Act aside for an old bill she had in her drawer, carving out an entirely separate “ancillary asset” definition for crypto. That old bill, written before President Trump was re-elected and charted an America First path for crypto, had been launched in tandem with Democratic New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand while Joe Biden was still in the White House.
But Lummis’ decision to resurrect it even led Gillibrand and pro-crypto Democrats to break off and go their own way by offering alternative bill language. The CLARITY Act was an easy win, but she decided to cater to anti-crypto Democrats and Bitcoin maximalists who liked her old bill better.
This has caused great frustration. Kristin Smith of the Solana Policy Institute said the prospects for passing market structure legislation are now “incredibly narrow.” But Smith is just being polite. Lummis was handed an easy win with the CLARITY Act roaring out of the House with 78 Democratic votes and celebrations at the White House. Now President Trump is left through no fault of his own having to explain why the job didn’t get finished.
We need answers from Lummis – for the American industry, for American consumers and for all of those who fought to elect an America First President of the United States. She needs to stop derailing the CLARITY Act and deliver this win for the country.
Aiden Buzzetti is the President of the 1776 Project Foundation. He was formerly the Head of Coalitions and Candidate Recruitment for the 1776 Project PAC. Aiden is a native of Marietta, Ga. and a student of public schools. He graduated from American University with a degree in political science.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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