Key U.S. Lawmaker McHenry Says House Has 'Workable' Stablecoin Bill
The House Financial Services Committee chairman, in his final year in Congress, is still optimistic about passing a U.S. stablecoin bill, and Sen. Cynthia Lummis said the Senate's majority leader is open to it.
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- Both Rep. Patrick McHenry and Sen. Cynthia Lummis said there's a potential path for a stablecoin bill on Congress this year, though they couldn't say when it could happen.
- The U.S. Senate has been trailing on the stablecoin issue, without any committee work yet on a bill.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) said some of the recent chaos in Congress derailed crypto legislation for a while, but a stablecoin bill is largely worked out in the House of Representatives and just needs a scheduled floor vote.
"We have a workable frame," McHenry, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, said at Coinbase's Update the System Summit in Washington on Wednesday. "I think we're at the phase where we can see the airport; we can see where we're going to land the plane; we can see how we're going to land the plane; we just don't know when we're going to land the plane."
McHenry has been working with his panel's top Democrat, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) on a stablecoin bill for nearly two years, and "month over month, we're in a better position." But with the ongoing debates over federal spending plans that have locked up Congress, he said the lawmakers need to get past the budget issues to be able to get into the legislation he hopes to accomplish before his announced retirement at the end of this session. The House is aiming to vote on its latest effort to fund the federal government this week.
Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) also spoke at the event, saying those who are working on the stablecoin bill in the Senate are speaking "daily" with their House counterparts. She predicted that a compromise bill is the most likely crypto legislation to make it in 2024.
"The administration's willingness to move forward with stablecoin legislation, I think, makes it by far the most optimal portion of this to move forward," Lummis said, noting that Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), the majority leader of the Senate, has said he's willing to consider such a bill.
McHenry's committee has previously passed a stablecoin bill in his committee with a bipartisan vote that saw several Democrats supporting that Republican-driven version despite Waters' opposition.
McHenry called the push for crypto "very important for humanity."
"We are on the side of the angels," he said.
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Jesse Hamilton is CoinDesk's deputy managing editor for global policy and regulation. He doesn't hold any crypto.