Senator Cynthia Lummis stepped up her criticism of Democrats ahead of next week’s Senate procedural vote on the Clarity Act, while saying the crypto market structure bill can still make it through.
In a post on X on Tuesday, the Republican senator responded to a Semafor report that said Republican senators believed the legislation was likely to fail when the Senate returns next week. Lawmakers had been hoping to hold a key vote on the long-delayed bill in August before a five-week recess, but that plan was delayed and the Senate is now set to vote next week.
Lummis says Democrats hold the key to passage
Lummis wrote: “If this bill fails it won’t be because of ethics, it will be because Democrats didn’t join Republicans in embracing a bipartisan bill that protected consumers, cements America’s leadership in digital assets, and empowered law enforcement to clamp down on illicit finance.”
She said Democrats were still demanding changes that could allow future regulators to kill the crypto industry.
Lummis also left room for the bill to pass. “If we can bridge those gaps I’m confident we can pass Clarity, but they require further compromise from Democrats, not the White House,” she said.
Bitcoin Magazine also posted that the U.S. Senate will hold a procedural cloture vote on the Clarity Act one week from that day. Lummis said that if lawmakers fail to pass it next week, “we will not get another realistic shot at this before the end of the decade.”
House passed the bill, but the Senate has stalled
Lummis had previously said that if the Clarity Act dies, Democrats would be responsible. She and other lawmakers supportive of crypto have repeatedly criticized politicians they believe are deliberately holding the bill back.
The Clarity Act would create a formal framework for dividing oversight among regulators, setting out which digital assets count as securities, commodities, or stablecoins.
The bill passed the House of Representatives last July, but it has been stuck this year. According to the report, the main reason has been a clash between the banking lobby and crypto companies over paying customers stablecoin yield.
Ethics revisions have not resolved objections
A new draft intended to address ethics concerns began circulating in July. It would bar government officials from promoting crypto or making money from it, an issue Democrats have tied to criticism of the Trump family.
Even with those revisions, a group of Democrats said the bill still fell short and pushed for amendments.
President Donald Trump has also urged lawmakers to move the legislation across the finish line. In August, he said that for the U.S. to remain the undisputed leader in Bitcoin and crypto, lawmakers had to pass the “very, very powerful legislation.”
The report was first published by Bitcoin Magazine and written by Mathew Di Salvo.