Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins Act
Floor Speech
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Mr. DAVIDSON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the ranking member for yielding.
Mr. Speaker, I have not seen a perfect bill since I have been in Congress, but this is a pretty good bill. It is an important bill. Regulating stablecoins is long overdue at the Federal level, but make no mistake, stablecoins aren't new.
The New York Department of Financial Services has regulated stablecoins in the State of New York since 2018. They are time-tested and proven, and they have been stable.
It is long overdue for us to provide Federal legal clarity here, so why am I speaking in opposition to it? My Republican colleagues are exactly right about the stablecoins and the need for regulation. That is why we passed the STABLE Act, but my Democratic colleagues are right this time to recognize that the legislative process is broken and, frankly, we all know that. Everyone in the House does.
We have seen it broken on lots of things, but here, today, we have got a defective product that our legislative process prevented us from fixing.
On the product, the GENIUS Act, we agree we have five amendments that we want to do to the GENIUS Act that we are doing in the CLARITY Act, and they are important. Frankly, while the GENIUS Act does address retail CBDC, and it is an important concession because Democrats want a surveillance state Central Bank Digital Currency.
Mr. Speaker, you are going to see that when we vote later on Tom Emmer's bill. They want that. Republicans are thankfully united in opposing Central Bank Digital Currency, but we should deal with that fully here.
On March 8, 2023, in a dialogue with Chairman Hill, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said that they would need congressional approval for a retail CBDC, but he went on to explain that you could have a layered CBDC. They are building just that at the Federal Reserve.
We should completely turn that off, and that is why we need to pass Representative Emmer's bill. I will talk about that later, but we also need to protect self-custody, which is the ability for you to move your money directly person to person without an intermediary. You won't have direct access to your own money unless you protect it because government agencies continue to try to ban it. We need to protect it. We do in the CLARITY Act, and that is why I oppose the bill.
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