[Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 145 (Tuesday, September 15, 2026)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4704-S4706]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Digital Asset Market Clarity Act
Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, I come to the Senate floor today to oppose
my Republican colleagues' efforts to jam through the Clarity Act. I
believe we can get crypto legislation that both Republicans and
Democrats can agree on but not this bill.
This bill poses a massive risk to families, to our economy, and to
our national security. We need crypto legislation that stops political
self-dealing, and I know that many in the crypto industry agree with
that. But this bill would turbocharge Donald Trump's unprecedented
corruption.
Donald Trump's primary campaign promise was that he would lower
prices beginning on day one--his promise, his words. Instead, Trump's
tariffs, Trump's forever war halfway around the world, Trump's
healthcare cuts, Trump's closing cheaper, clean energy--Trump's
policies are boosting the cost of everything. From groceries, to gas,
to healthcare, to utilities, they are all going up, up, up.
While Donald Trump is raising costs for working people, Trump is also
using the Presidency to make himself richer, and he has added crypto to
his ways to cash in. Instead of doubling down on efforts to prosecute
crypto scams and to block terrorists and drug traffickers from using
crypto, Donald Trump has used his office to promote crypto. He has
talked up crypto. He has held crypto contests with the prize being
dinner with the President, and he has appointed crypto-friendly
regulators.
And the money has just rolled in for him. Shortly before he was sworn
in as President the second time, Trump opened his own crypto business,
and boy, what a launch that man had. As he talked up crypto, the money
just kept rolling in. In 2025 alone, Trump and his family raked in $1.4
billion from their crypto ventures. In fact, Donald Trump made more
from crypto last year than any publicly traded crypto company in
America. There is no one who has more to gain personally from this bill
than the President of the United States.
OK. So Trump won big time on crypto. Who lost? The working people who
followed their leader. People who bought into Trump's crypto ventures
have lost billions of dollars. For example, the fans who bought Trump's
meme coins have lost nearly $4 billion.
Trump just keeps pumping up the crypto industry. He has disbanded the
DOJ's Crypto Enforcement Team, he has dropped crypto enforcement
actions against companies that donated millions of dollars to his
campaign, and he has given multiple Presidential pardons for crypto
executives convicted of serious crimes. Trump's corruption is so
extensive that he has infected crypto's entire financial regulatory
framework.
Now Republicans are not only turning a blind eye to Trump's
corruption; now they want to vote today to boost that corruption. Late
on Sunday night, the Republicans released new ethics provisions that
the Republicans negotiated with the White House. They read exactly like
what the most corrupt President in our history would bless--a tiny,
little fig leaf that claims it is doing something about corruption but
that is carefully written to make sure it will not prevent Donald Trump
from making his next $1.4 billion in crypto profits.
First, the new text guarantees that Donald Trump will never ever be
held accountable under the law. Why? Because Trump's lapdogs would have
the power to shut down any enforcement of the ethics provisions against
Donald Trump.
The text says the Attorney General--you know, that is the guy who at
his confirmation hearing said, ``I'm [Trump's] lawyer''--not America's
lawyer; Trump's lawyer. This is the guy who would decide whether to
bring an enforcement action against the President.
The bill would not allow the State attorneys general to bring any
enforcement actions against the President. All they could do is try to
sue Trump's former personal lawyer, the Attorney General, to do
something about it.
Here is the kicker: Nobody thinks the Attorney General is going to
bring an action against Donald Trump, but this bill has belt and
suspenders built right in to ensure that Donald Trump's moneymaking
schemes just keep right on rolling. The bill says that Trump's
handpicked cronies at his Office of Government Ethics can wave a magic
wand by issuing a legal opinion, and then, as if by magic, Donald Trump
would suddenly be protected from any enforcement at all against his
next round of crypto corruption. An ethics
[[Page S4705]]
restriction that the President himself can have completely waived is
not an ethics restriction.
Second, even if these provisions were enforceable, there are massive
loopholes in them that would allow Trump to continue juicing his crypto
empire. Under the new text, Trump would be allowed to continue making
hundreds of millions of dollars from his crypto ventures, including
World Liberty Financial and his meme coin. Not only would Trump easily
be able to keep or restructure his existing crypto ventures, he would
also be able to create new ones--extra corruption. For example, this
new text does nothing to stop Donald Trump from becoming the first
President in American history to own and regulate his own bank.
Lastly, Trump could just put his holdings in a blind trust in name
only while still knowing exactly what assets are there and still in
charge of the regulators who can juice the value of Donald Trump's
crypto investments.
Trump has already made $1.4 billion in 2025 alone as a crypto
wheeler-dealer, and the bill the Republicans want to vote on today
would make sure he can just keep raking in the dough.
It is not just the ethics provisions that are terrible; this bill
would make it easier for terrorist organizations, for drug cartels, and
for rogue states to buy and sell weapons and pay off government
officials--all using crypto; easier for terrorists to finance their
operations and harder for law enforcement to catch them; easier for
scammers to cheat Americans and harder for law enforcement to catch
them; easier for Iran and North Korea to evade sanctions and harder for
law enforcement to catch them.
This bill would put us all at risk of a crypto-fueled economic crash.
The crypto bill has become a Christmas tree with gifts for other high-
risk scammers. The bill, for example, would blow a massive hole in our
nearly century-old securities laws by allowing and encouraging
companies that have nothing to do with crypto to throw their assets on
a blockchain to escape the investor protections that apply to
traditional securities--you know, like stocks, the stock market. Now,
that could drain billions of dollars out of our stock market that
families depend on to fund their retirement savings, and it could
decimate the guardrails that were put in place after the Great
Depression. In fact, unions are opposed to this bill specifically
because they see it as putting workers' hard-earned pensions at risk.
Really, you should just ask yourself, what does this have to do with
crypto?
Why are we putting provisions in place to blow up protections on the
stock market because a handful of crypto bros want it?
This bill would give banks a green light to use America's banking
deposits to engage in a brandnew list of risky crypto activities:
lending against crypto as collateral, buying crypto directly, trading
crypto derivatives, operating blockchain notes, selling crypto
software. The list goes on and on.
Think about how the price of crypto shot up and down and up and down,
in just the last couple of years alone, and then imagine what happens
when the biggest banks in America use the money in your savings account
to load up on that kind of crypto.
The bill also blocks States and Tribal nations from enforcing their
own laws on the books to protect their citizens from getting scammed.
The president of the Indian Gaming Association calls this bill ``the
greatest threat to Tribal sovereignty in a generation.''
This is not what the American people want. They want Congress to do
something about the affordability crisis. They want an end to Trump's
war in Iran. They want their elected leaders to step up and regulate
AI.
According to a survey by crypto news outlet CoinDesk, just 1 percent
of respondents rank crypto as their top concern. Another poll found
that if there is anything that voters want to do on crypto, it is to
put in place meaningful anti-fraud and anti-corruption measures. That
is the kind of thing this bill glaringly fails to do.
So you have got to ask yourself: Why are we here?
We need crypto regulation. Yes, we do. But we do not need a crypto
bill written by the crypto industry to benefit only the most extreme
voices in the crypto industry and at the expense of our national
security, our economic stability, and to help the most corrupt
President in the history of the United States make himself even richer.
I urge my Republican colleagues to come to the table and negotiate a
real bipartisan crypto bill. But until then, I urge my colleagues to
vote no.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming.
Ms. LUMMIS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to
15 minutes prior to the scheduled rollcall vote.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Ms. LUMMIS. Mr. President, in a few minutes, the Senate will vote on
one of the most important, consequential, bipartisan financial services
bill in a generation--the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act. Before we
do, my colleagues need to understand exactly what is at stake.
I have spent every single day of the past year fighting to get the
Clarity Act ready for prime time because Wyoming did not send me to
Washington to watch America fall behind. My State sent me here to make
sure we lead.
Today, this body decides whether we keep that promise or sideline
American leadership.
Wyoming wrote the blueprint for regulating digital assets in the
United States and, in many ways, the world. In 2017, the Wyoming
Legislature embarked on a mission to create a first-of-its-kind
regulatory framework for digital assets that protects consumers and
promotes responsible innovation.
The Wyoming Legislature was the first legislative body in the United
States to draw the line between a security and a commodity. It was the
first to safely integrate digital assets into our Nation's banking
system in a safe and sound way through special purpose depository
institutions. And Wyoming was the first jurisdiction in the Nation to
create a new legal entity for decentralized, unincorporated, nonprofit
associations.
A Wyoming special purpose depository institution was also the first
depository institution in the history of our banking system to earn a
master account from the Federal Reserve.
The successful Wyoming blueprint is the foundation of the Digital
Asset Market Clarity Act of today.
This is not a partisan bill--not even close. Democrats secured 126
separate concessions in this text, and they wrote more than half of the
630 pages in front of you.
This bill started at 300 pages. It stands at 635 because I sat across
the table from my colleagues for an entire year and took every
objection seriously and built those changes into the bill ourselves.
That is not capitulation. That is what legislating in good faith
looks like--something this body, far too often, forgets how to do.
Nowhere--absolutely nowhere--have we given more than on ethics in
this bill. In July, President Trump voluntarily put himself, the Vice
President, every judge, federally elected official, and their spouses
under the strictest ethics restrictions this country has ever seen.
Almost no one in Washington would have offered that on their own, but
Democrats still wanted more. They wanted independent outside
enforcement. So President Trump went back to the table, and he gave
more.
This final text reflects substantially all of the Tillis-Gallego
framework, built on top of what was already historic.
State attorneys general now have direct authority to enforce these
ethics rules against Federal officials themselves. They can go after
exchanges and issuers under consumer protection law so bad actors get
hit coming and going. No President has ever gone this far, and this
President did it twice.
Let's be honest about what a ``no'' vote actually is today. It is not
a principled stand against the President. It is not a vote against a
bill that has had a partisan flare. It is a vote to protect
politicians' personal crypto holdings from the very limits Democrats
demanded and got.
It is a vote against the consumer protections American families are
counting on, and it is a vote to hand the future of financial
innovation to a foreign competitor who will not be foolish enough to
waste this chance to lead
[[Page S4706]]
our global digital economy and onshore this industry and the good-
paying jobs it creates.
This country put the first man on the Moon. We built financial
institutions, and we built the internet. We do not watch history happen
to us. We make history. We should not stop that tradition today.
Madam President, 635 pages, a full year of daily negotiations--daily,
even on weekends--126 Democrat wins written into law, the strongest
ethics restrictions any President has ever accepted, in writing, right
here, this is what good faith looks like. This is what compromise looks
like. And in a few minutes, my colleagues will decide whether or not it
meant anything at all.
I have given this fight everything I have from the moment I was sworn
in as a U.S. Senator--and especially over the last year. For so long,
this fight has been mine and that of my incredible partner and dear
friend Senator Kirsten Gillibrand's and Chairman Scott's and Chairman
Boozman's, Senator Tillis', Senator Moreno's, and many of my colleagues
who have walked alongside me in this fight for this industry to bring
us to this moment.
Today, this fight belongs to the whole body. President Trump gave
more than anyone in this town expected--twice. It is time for this body
to take yes for an answer, take the win.
Stand with American innovation. Stand with American consumers. Stand
with American leadership. Do not let this day be the day we handed our
future to someone else because we were too afraid to finish what we
started.
Let's vote yes. Let's not only join the 21st-century economy, let's
not only join the digital age, let's lead it. Let's define it. Let's
make it work for America and the world. Let's vote yes. Let's get this
done.