Crypto Industry’s CLARITY Act Faces Major Setback

The crypto industry’s long-delayed, highly anticipated CLARITY Act just ran into another problem. House Republican leadership has canceled the chamber’s planned voting weeks of September 21st and 28th, meaning lawmakers will return on September 14 for just four days before leaving Washington until after the midterm elections. With the Senate scheduled to begin work on its version of the bill on September 15, the chances of CLARITY reaching President Donald Trump’s desk before the midterms have become extremely slim.

The House’s move came from Republican leadership after lawmakers passed a stopgap spending bill that reduced the immediate need to keep members in Washington. Majority Whip Tom Emmer’s office notified Republicans that the final two September voting weeks were being removed from the calendar. Speaker Mike Johnson said members were “jostling a lot of different priorities right now,” while Rep. Morgan Griffith said it made little sense to keep passing bills that were then “languishing in the sauna of the Senate.”

That leaves the Senate with a particularly awkward deadline. Senators are scheduled to vote on a procedural motion to advance CLARITY on September 15. Even if cloture succeeds, the Senate would still need to complete consideration of the bill and pass it. Because the Senate is working from a version that differs from the legislation previously approved by the House, the two chambers would also have to resolve those differences before the bill could reach President Trump.