The House and Senate are both back in Washington this week, with a short runway before Congress clears out for the November midterms.
On Tuesday, the Senate failed to clear a procedural hurdle—the cloture vote on the motion to proceed—for H.R. 3633, the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, better known as the CLARITY Act.
The vote was 49-50, and 60 votes were required to even begin the debate. This wasn’t a vote on final passage, simply on whether the Senate could even open work on the bill—and it failed.
This may sound like niche policy only crypto investors care about, but inside CLARITY was something that has become important to many conservatives: the Anti-CBDC Surveillance State Act, which would permanently ban the use of a “central bank digital currency” (CBDC) and ensure that a Communist China-style surveillance regime could never be established in the United States.
Central Bank Digital Currency would equate to handing the government a ledger of every single transaction you make and giving it the power to freeze, throttle, or condition your money (similar to Canada freezing the bank accounts of trucker protestors and China’s use of a so-called “social credit score”). Until Congress enacts a CBDC ban, the surveillance state door is open.
If everything important requires 60 votes when Republicans hold only a 53-seat majority, with an incalcitrant minority, delivering legislative wins for the American people becomes nearly impossible without embracing the “talking filibuster” strategy proposed by Senator Mike Lee and written about and discussed extensively by CPI’s Rachel Bovard. Otherwise, the Senate will remain dysfunctional for years to come.
CLARITY may still be revived after November, theoretically. Practically, however, the year’s calendar is nearly done. In the meantime, crypto policy drifts back to the agencies, and the anti-CBDC firewall remains more of a talking point than a law. Conservatives who care about limited government should treat that as unfinished business, not a niche industry loss.
ICYMI…
- Fred Fleitz in American Greatness: Name the Enemy: The 25th Anniversary of 9/11 Still Demands It
- A new report by Center for Immigration Studies finds that the number of migrants from the Muslim world has roughly doubled since 9/11
- Rep. Lauren Boebert writes an op-ed in The Hill: Republicans Kept Their Promise: America’s Border is Secure Again
- Katie Gorka in The Federalist: Media Lies About ‘Infinitesimally Rare’ Noncitizen Voting Are A Load of Bull Hockey
- Nick Freitas and others are releasing a new documentary on X premiering on 9/17: The Immigration Crisis That Will Destroy the West.