美众议员：政府停摆愚蠢，Clarity Act 需两党妥协

I'm sure you're looking across the rotunda from the upper chamber, at least in spirit, to see what's happening in the Senate this evening. And it does appear that they are going to get their arms around a continuing resolution to keep the government funded beyond the end of September. You've already done this in the House. If it comes back with changes. Do we have problems? It'll depend on the nature of the changes. And I know so many of my colleagues in the House, they love to complain about the Senate, and clearly the Senate moves more slowly than the House does.

And in general, we hate getting jammed by the Senate. And so if the changes are modest, then I think the House would be happy to take them up when we come back. If there are major changes, then I think we're going to have to fight about it a little bit. Well, it becomes a question that if that fight ultimately leads to a government shutdown in September. Congressman, if you don't pass what the Senate passes, how likely is that scenario knowing that we've been told by a number of your colleagues that the feeling is Democrats would allow that to happen because they feel it doesn't hurt them as much ahead of the midterms.

Oh, I haven't seen a lot of evidence that Democrats want a shutdown. I mean, clearly a few of them do. But you got some people on both sides of the aisle who just love a fight and love to use any leverage they can. But remember that the House has already passed a continuing resolution. The Senate could take our work product, and then we would know that we wouldn't have a government shutdown on September 30th. Uh, the Senate's going second.

And so if they make a few changes, I suspect we'll be okay with that. If they make big changes, we're just going to have to try to find some common ground. I do not think there'll be a shutdown. Shutdowns are stupid. They're always stupid. Uh, they hurt the American people. They certainly don't hurt the members of Congress. Who are the ones dragging their feet in causing this problem. So let's just be big boys and girls and get our work done.

Well, it's stupid. We're only a disqualify our in Washington. Uh, Congressman, do you have a take on the Clarity Act? It looks like it's being left on the side of the road by the Senate. They won't take it up until after recess. And some people think that's the death knell. How about you? I do have to take on the Clarity Act. I'm one of the four authors of the Clarity Act, the House version, which was an exceptionally good piece of work, which is how we got 85 or 90 Democrats on top of almost all of the Republicans.

For your viewers who don't know, the Clarity Act provides some basic rules of the road or on digital assets and crypto. Yeah. Every other member of the G20 has figured this out. Our country is lagging behind. We're not going to have the kind of innovation and the kind of investment we need. If the digital assets ecosystem can't trust that we've got good rules of the road. The House version is really, really, really good.

And yes, I have a fair amount of pride of authorship. Uh, the Senate has made a few changes. I don't like many of the changes they made. Some of them, I think, would be relatively easy for us to choke down. Others will be more difficult. But at this point, I'm just rooting for the Senate to get something done. And I know that both Republicans and Democrats at different times can be pains in the. But I'm not generally the world's most partisan member of Congress.

But I am at this moment far more frustrated with the Democrats. I think the Senate Clarity Act made a large number of concessions to Democratic views. I think that the Republicans in the Senate tried to meet the Democrats halfway. And I just think we're in a position right now where the Dems don't really want to play ball. That is not good news for clarity. And it's not good news for investment and innovation in our country.

Well, when you talk about the changes the Senate has made, obviously ethics provisions were a big question mark as to whether or not there would be an agreeable compromise to both sides. Would a forced divestiture of the president and his family's crypto holdings be an adequate compromise in your mind? Is that something to use your phrasing that the House could choke down the ethics provisions just conceptually are not that big a problem?

Uh, obviously the devil, as we say, is in the details, but those aren't actually the the the issues that caused the most concern. I am a little disappointed, though, that the Republicans included some relatively strong language on the ethics reform around these digital assets. They had the sign off, soft sign up, uh, from a large number of Democratic leaders, good men and women who were working on this language. But it just feels like the goalposts keep moving.

No matter what we offer, it's not quite enough to get the Democrats on board. Really interesting. I know that you have a unique view as not only one of the authors, but as chair of the Digital Assets Subcommittee on this. Should the president have to divest or not? And what about community bankers in your district? They're still pretty worried about stablecoin. Neal, do you see a deposit flight coming from the language as it's written?

I don't mind it if we want to tweak a little bit. Some of the yield varying language around stablecoins. I do think there's a happy medium to be reached here. This is not going to be a whole lot win for the digital asset advocates, and it's not going to be a whole lot of win for traditional financial institutions. If we were going to turn that knob a little bit more one way or the other, I think it's certainly myself.

And I think the broader House could get on board with that. I'm not a guy who likes to pick fights and burn burn houses down. I'm a guy who likes to solve problems. So I will take two thirds or three quarters of a loaf on most anything. Same thing would be true with ethics reform. Listen, I just in general, I don't think public officials, myself included, should be buying and selling individual stocks. I don't think we should be buying and selling individual, uh, crypto coins, uh, particularly, uh, in advance of a big vote, even if it's not crooked, it looks lousy.

And so I'm a big fan of some pretty strong ethics language, uh, around this whole arena.