Clarity Act Stalls in Senate as Crypto Bill Fails to Clear Key Vote

The Senate on Tuesday failed to clear a key procedural hurdle for the Clarity Act, voting 49–50 against cloture on a motion to proceed. That vote rejected a step that would have limited debate and allowed the chamber to take up the crypto market structure bill; invoking cloture would have required 60 votes. Because the motion to proceed was blocked, further consideration of the measure in the Senate is effectively prevented for now.

Lawmakers had spent weeks negotiating major points of contention in the bill, including new ethics restrictions for public officials with crypto interests and limits on stablecoin rewards. Republicans released an updated draft over the weekend that they described as their final offer, saying it included 126 substantive changes requested by Democrats. The revised text tightened ethics provisions to require divestiture or placement of crypto holdings into qualified blind trusts, permitted state attorneys general to assist enforcement, broadened who counts as a covered official, and removed a sunset date from those ethics rules.

Despite those concessions, Democrats remained dissatisfied and submitted a counterproposal late Monday seeking additional limits on large holdings, rules for dependent children and paid promotions, and further edits to related sections of the bill. Republicans rejected the new asks, with a Senate Banking Committee spokesperson calling the demands a shift in negotiating position. Banking groups also criticized the bill’s proposed “circuit breaker” on stablecoin yields, saying it would activate only after substantial deposit flight, while the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers published analysis disputing the deposit-flight claim.

Tuesday’s procedural defeat does not permanently close the door: Senate leaders could bring the measure back for another cloture vote, but doing so would require assembling sufficient support and navigating a tight Senate calendar with roughly three weeks of working days before lawmakers shift focus to fall campaigning. Even if the Senate later passes its revised version, the changes it adopted differ from the House-passed text, meaning both chambers would need to reconcile language before sending a final bill to the president. In the meantime, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission said it is pursuing its own rulemaking using existing authority while its chair signaled a preference for legislation that would be harder for future administrations to reverse.