Heritage Action for America announced its fifth key vote of this Congress in favor of House Majority Whip Tom Emmer’s (R-MN) CBDC Anti-Surveillance State Act, Breitbart News can exclusively reveal.
“CBDCs are another governmental control tactic that would expand federal power and spike U.S. inflation. Heritage Action has consistently opposed CBDCs as these assets threaten the privacy and civil liberties of American citizens,” Steve Chartan, the vice president of government relations for the Heritage Action, said in a written statement. “This legislation safeguards Americans from potential government surveillance, control, and political intimidation. Our Sentinels have worked tirelessly to oppose CBDCs and push back against outright federal coercion. ”
Heritage Action’s key vote alerts lawmakers that their vote on the legislation will impact their score on the Heritage Action Scorecard, which reveals to Heritage Action’s 2.5 million activists nationwide how their votes compare to other member of Congress.
Emmer’s legislation would bar unelected bureaucrats such as the Federal Reserve, the nation’s central bank, from issuing a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) that would undermine America’s right to financial privacy. It would also prevent the Fed from using CBDC’s a tool to implement monetary policy.
E.J. Antoni, the Heritage Foundation chief economist and Richard Aster Fellow, explained the danger of the CBDC’s, saying in a statement, “A CBDC is the government version of a crypto currency and, like the government version of anything, it’s much worse than its private market counterparts. Central bank digital currencies give faceless bureaucrats the ultimate control over how you live your life, including all spending and investing decisions.
Antoni added, “Every single purchase—or even a donation—that you make can be approved or rejected by the federal government. It’s a level of surveillance of which Orwell could not have conceived when he wrote his dystopian novel 1984, and it would also make it even easier for the Federal Reserve to create inflation.”
Emmer has long pushed for his legislation to ban CBDCs, proposing the CBDC Anti-Surveillance State Act in 2023, and stating that a CBDC could lead to an drastically increase of financial surveillance on Americans’ lives.
“There is no reason for the United States to emulate the Chinese Communist Party by creating a surveillance-style central bank digital currency. Thank you, Heritage Action, for recognizing the importance of this legislation and protecting Americans’ right to financial privacy,” Emmer told Breitbart News in a written statement.
The Biden administration issued an executive order in 2022 placing urgency on CBDC research and development, showcasing that there was strong interest in creating the feasibility of a CBDC. President Donald Trump, early in his administration, signed an executive order prohibiting agencies from pursuing one. The administration and other Democrats have long called for the creation of a CBDC.
Saule Omarova, Biden’s failed nominee for the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), advocated for the creation of a CBDC.
In one academic paper, Omarova blamed the rise of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies for decentralizing control of the financial system away from the government and towards the average American.
She wrote in “Technology v. Technology: Fintech as a Regulatory Challenge” that the “root of the problem” in the “massive digitization of finance” is the “critical shift in the … balance of power in the financial system” away from government control.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), who is highly critical of the cryptocurrency industry, in April 2022 called for the government to create a CBDC.
A former senior government official told Breitbart News in November 2021, “And, why do they want to do that? Because eventually, they want to be able to decide which transactions to approve and disapprove of. You know, that’s what it’s ultimately all about.”
National Security Agency surveillance (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden said that a CBDC is “expressly designed to deny its users the basic ownership of their money and to install the State at the mediating center of every transaction.”
Sean Moran is a policy reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on X @SeanMoran3
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