Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) remains steadfast in his belief that Congress can pass a stablecoin regulation bill before he leaves office at the end of the year, even in the face of a turbulent political environment and the House Financial Services Committee’s failure to vote on a bill he had previously sponsored.
“I think we can get our stablecoin policy set through and signed into law,” McHenry said Tuesday at a Bitcoin Policy Institute event in Washington. “That will be the first sign that there is hope and that there is bipartisanship when it comes to this world of digital assets.”
Senators from the United States have drafted legislation to deal with stablecoins, which are tokens linked to reliable assets like the dollar, but the Senate Banking Committee hasn’t yet addressed any of it. A bill that would be signed by President Joe Biden would need to pass both houses.
McHenry has been working with House Democrats and members of his party to draft stablecoin legislation for months. A bill that passed his committee has the backing of multiple Democrats.However, there has been opposition to the federal government’s role in supervising stablecoin issuers from the administration and from Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), the leading Democrat on the panel. For the longest time, lawmakers believed that this area of the cryptocurrency market was the easiest to regulate; but, the reality of a disorganized, sharply divided Congress have frequently dashed hopes for legislative achievement.