Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. LYNCH. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to the so-called GENIUS Act.

Mr. Speaker, this bill has never even been considered or debated by the House Financial Services Committee or the Agriculture Committee, the committees of jurisdiction, which is the usual practice in this body. I guess this is what passes for genius these days.

Republican leadership has, once again, caved in to President Trump's demands to quickly push crypto legislation.

President Trump just yesterday posted to pass the GENIUS Act ASAP. There is no need to debate it, read it, or amend it. Just pass it.

Mr. Speaker, you might think that Republicans might be cautious about taking financial policy directions from someone who has a side hustle selling baseball hats and Bibles and who has filed bankruptcy six times in the past 20 years. Sadly, Mr. Speaker, you would be mistaken.

This bill significantly weakens the U.S. dollar, which is the global U.S. reserve currency and provides a huge competitive advantage for our country.

This bill allows a complete takeover of our financial system by Big Tech companies by allowing these massive companies to issue their own cryptocurrencies.

For example, Google has 3.5 billion daily users, and META has over 2 billion active daily users, not to mention Amazon, X, or Walmart. Several of these companies have already indicated they are planning to launch crypto stablecoins if this bill becomes law. These companies can easily compel or incentivize users to move away from the dollar, away from traditional banks, and into these so-called stablecoins.

President Trump's own stablecoin is set to become one of the top 10 stablecoins after Abu Dhabi announced a $2 billion investment in World Liberty Financial, which is a joint venture between the Trump family, his sons, and Steve Witkoff and his family. You may recall, Mr. Speaker, that Steve Witkoff is Trump's Special Envoy to the Middle East, where Abu Dhabi is located.

Nothing in this bill prevents the clear conflicts of interest and violations of ethics laws by President Trump.

The worst aspect of this bill is the danger and risk that it puts on the backs of U.S. taxpayers because this will not end well, and nothing in this bill prevents a taxpayer bailout of crypto. If we really wanted to protect the taxpayer, we could require the crypto companies that are pushing these bills to absorb the losses if they fail. That would seem fair. Despite several attempts to have amendments included in this bill that would protect the taxpayer from paying for crypto bailouts, my Republican colleagues repeatedly refused.

We have seen in the past, in 2008, when the last version of financial innovation blew up, the collateralized debt obligations and other complex derivatives. It was the taxpayer who had to clean up that mess to the tune of $700 billion, while the bankers who created the mess got bonuses.

We should not let that happen again.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my friends on the other side and my colleagues on our side to defend the U.S. taxpayer and vote ``no'' on this bill.

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