Key Takeaways
- The CLARITY Act failed to reach 60 votes in the Senate, halting the push for crypto regulation.
- Rep. Tom Emmer downplayed the defeat, predicting the bill will return and pass after the midterms.
- Democrats like Maxine Waters opposed the bill, demanding stricter ethics to curb Trump’s profiteering.
Is the CLARITY Act truly dead? Emmer and Waters Clash
As the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, known as the CLARITY Act, faced defeat in the Senate after failing to reach the 60 votes needed for its final consideration, Democrats and Republicans have different opinions on its future.
While it began with bipartisan support, the CLARITY Act was later considered a Republican bill, as Democrats opposed it because of the loopholes in its ethics provisions, which, alongside other issues, led to rejection even by its original proponents.
Nonetheless, Representative Tom Emmer maintains a positive stance on crypto regulation and the CLARITY Act’s fate, saying he was confident in the Senate’s determination to advance it. Talking to Fox Business, Emmer compared passing the GENIUS Act without the CLARITY Act to “having a cell phone without cell towers.”
“I don’t think it spells doom,” said Emmer. “It just delays it until after the midterms. You’ll see the CLARITY Act again in the Senate after the midterms,” he pointed out on Wednesday, assessing that it will be passed before year’s end.
For other representatives, CLARITY’s demise over ethics language represents a larger disagreement that will ultimately doom the Act.
Rep. Maxine Waters, a ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee who has introduced legislation to stop President Trump’s crypto endeavors, stresses that CLARITY failed as “it did nothing to rein in Trump’s overt, pernicious, and dangerous corruption.”
“Until Congress passes legislation to end the President’s crypto profiteering and recoup his ill-gotten gains, any legislation in the crypto space would only serve to validate and condone his worst actions,” Waters declared on Thursday.
Even so, a group of Democrats who also worked on the bill, led by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, has vowed to keep pursuing crypto regulation, stressing that they “remain committed to working in a bipartisan fashion to get this legislation passed.”
