Cbdc Anti-Surveillance State Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. SHERMAN. Madam Chair, today the gross hypocrisy of crypto advocates is exposed. For several years, they were screaming: Don't touch crypto because it is innovative, and innovation is wonderful, and innovation shouldn't be stopped and if we don't innovate other countries will.

Today, the crypto forces bring a bill up that has one purpose: to block innovation.

Why do we block innovation? Because there might be a competitive payment system to the crypto payment system. In other words, the crypto bros need to innovate and create a better payment system, and if they face competition, we need a law to stop them.

This is a bad bill if it did what the authors say it will do. What it will actually do is hard to know because of how poorly drafted it is.

It bans a central bank digital currency or anything that comes close to one or anything that is substantially similar. The bill itself is a word salad of antigovernment and pro-crypto buzz words.

How does it define this digital currency that it prohibits? It simply says digital money is a direct liability of the Federal Reserve system.

Well, all our money is a direct liability to the Federal Reserve system. It bans that, presumably, if it is electronic, so it bans 20th century technology.

When the Fed buys $100 million of Treasury bills from a large bank, do you think that they put it all in armored cars and send it to J.P. Morgan? No, it is electronic. They are paying for it with a digital liability, a direct liability of the Federal Reserve system.

This bill, as it is written, not as it is oratorically described, would require hundreds of thousands of armored cars if we are going to do the business that we have been doing since the 20th century.

I would ask any judge interpreting this bill to keep in mind not the words in the bill, because that would stop 20th century technology and all of our major financial transactions, but the purposes of the authors.

What is the purpose? The purpose is that we should not have an electronic payment system that does not achieve two purposes: Number one, the crypto bros must make a profit; and number two, it has to be a system that is effective for drug dealers and tax evaders.

Judges interpreting this word salad that calls itself a bill should keep those two objectives in mind.

Then we are told that we need a new payment system in this country so the government cannot freeze bank accounts because Canada froze bank accounts of anti-vax truckers. I have no idea whether Canada should have frozen those bank accounts, but I do know this: If because Canada froze bank accounts of anti-vax truckers, we should have a payment system that makes it impossible for the American Government to freeze the bank accounts of convicted tax evaders, convicted drug dealers, and convicted charlatans. Then we enter into a new world that I call patriotic anarchism, the folks who demand that America be strong and that the government be totally defanged and inept and unable to do anything.

It is a wonderful world. You can believe in a strong America without an American Government or an American Government unable to freeze the bank accounts of convicted murderers. You want a strong America but not a government that is able to do that.

Now, this world of a surveillance state if we had a central bank digital currency, keep in mind the use of that currency is entirely voluntarily just as the use of a credit card is voluntary. If you use a credit card to buy a gun and then you kill somebody, there is a record. You are also free to use cash.

Cash has some disadvantages. In the example I just gave, those disadvantages are not apparent, but those disadvantages include that it is not electronic, that it is bulky, and that if you have over $10,000 you want to deposit in bank, a report is made.

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Mr. SHERMAN. Madam Chair, we have a bill, which if it is interpreted as written, blocks the American economy the way it operates today and has for decades and would create lots of American jobs building those armored cars because the Fed would have to deal with nonelectronic transactions.

If it is interpreted as intended, it is designed to create a world in which the American Government cannot conduct a criminal investigation that follows the money, and if someone is convicted, their bank accounts cannot be frozen because we have a new payment system without bank accounts that are not subject to being frozen.

Vote against this bill because of what is in it. Vote against this bill because of what they wanted to put in it and hoped to put in it but didn't.

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Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Chair, we are told to reject this because China is doing this. In China, they drink orange juice. Should we prohibit orange juice? Not everything that happens in China needs to be banned by statute in this Congress.

We are told we need to protect privacy, but this bill does not require anybody to use a digital currency. You are still going to have cash. You are still going to have a credit card. It is just one more option.

You may say the use of the credit card doesn't give you privacy because my wife then finds out I spent too much on a tie. So what do I do? I spend cash. You are going to have debit cards, credit cards, cash, and maybe a digital currency. If you want it to be private, don't use it. It is not mandatory.

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