Senate Republicans and President Donald Trump are pushing to jam the House again. This time, it’s all about crypto.
The brewing clash — not unlike the megabill saga — is over how big and how quickly Hill Republicans should deliver on one of Trump’s most notable campaign pledges. In this case, it’s about Trump’s promise to make the U.S. “the crypto capital of the world.”
The Senate last month passed a bipartisan bill to boost a specific slice of the crypto universe — so-called stablecoins — but the House GOP is now wrestling with a desire to go bigger. It’s gearing up for a full-blown “crypto week” to make the case when House members return next Monday.
House Republicans, who spent years incubating crypto legislation that Senate Democrats were unwilling to touch, plan to vote on the Senate stablecoin bill and a wider-ranging “market structure” plan to overhaul securities and commodities rules impacting crypto trading.
The big hurdle for House Republicans is that Trump and Senate Republicans aren’t on board with tweaking the stablecoin bill or using it as a vehicle to take a bigger swing on crypto policy. Trump says he wants a “clean” version of the bill “lightning fast” and key GOP senators say they won’t take up a market structure overhaul until September.
Senate Republicans say it would be near-impossible to muster Democrats to pass a revised stablecoin bill.
“For me to get eight or nine Democrats to vote for something here is extraordinarily difficult to do,” said Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.), the lead sponsor of the Senate stablecoin bill, known as the GENIUS Act.
House GOP leaders signaled last week they won’t seek to combine that legislation with their broader revamp, but they haven’t yet said whether they will make changes to the measure.
House Financial Services Chair French Hill’s sweeping market structure bill, which is the crown jewel of the House GOP’s crypto push, is also the subject of eleventh-hour negotiating among House lawmakers ahead of next week’s floor vote.
The Arkansas Republican is working to secure wide bipartisan backing that would signal its political viability to the Senate. But some Democrats who have been on board in the past are withholding support unless the bill imposes restrictions on the Trump family’s entanglements in the crypto industry.
“For me, and I suspect for some other Democrats, if we can satisfy this question of conflict of interest — meaning there’s a prohibition on the president being an issuer — a lot of us can get to ‘yes,’” said Rep. Jim Himes, a senior Connecticut Democrat on House Financial Services. “They’re working in good faith to try to get us to ‘yes.’”
What else we’re watching:
— Netanyahu on the Hill: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be on Capitol Hill Tuesday and meet with Speaker Mike Johnson at 11:45 a.m. Netanyahu will then have a bipartisan Senate meeting with leaders John Thune and Chuck Schumer at 4 p.m., per two people granted anonymity to discuss the plans. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries didn’t comment when we asked whether he plans to meet with Netanyahu.
— NDAA markups begin: Senate Armed Services will begin subcommittee markups of the National Defense Authorization Act at 4:30 p.m. The full panel will debate and vote on the whole package starting Wednesday at 9:45 a.m. (reminder: this could take several days).
— Rescissions updates: Appropriations Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) is gearing up to offer amendments to Trump’s request to claw back $9.4 billion in already-approved funds ahead of the Senate’s July 18 deadline, and the contours of her desired tweaks are starting to take shape. Collins has already said she is strongly against the White House’s proposed cuts to foreign aid, and told Maine Public Radio that she would like to prevent drastic funding reductions to public media, too.
Jordain Carney contributed to this report.
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