Congress
Senators to meet with Trump on crypto bill
Several senators will meet with President Donald Trump at the White House on Thursday afternoon to discuss progress on a sweeping cryptocurrency regulatory bill, Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) said in an interview.
Negotiations on the Clarity Act have gone back and forth for months. One of the legislation’s biggest unresolved issues involves an ethics provision seeking to address Trump’s business ties to the crypto industry. The measure is a requirement for Senate Democrats, whose support is necessary to pass the bill through the chamber.
Moreno said a group of senators will give the president an update about the bill and its “path to success.”
“We’ll be talking about the entirety of the bill. I mean, obviously the president’s been very engaged in this bill,” said Moreno, who has been involved in negotiations over the bill. “He’s the one who’s really driven the innovation that I think will pay dividends.”
A White House spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Lawmakers are racing to pass the bill before the August recess, after which midterm election politics will make it difficult to get any substantive legislation through Congress.
“I’m hoping that we can come up with some agreement by the end of this week,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said in an interview. “I think it’s critical if we’re going to try and get this across the floor before August recess.”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Wednesday that he hopes to put the bill on the floor for a vote this work period, which ends Aug 7. When asked if he would put the bill to a vote even if a deal was not reached with Democrats, Thune said, “at some point, we’ll vote on it, yeah.”
It remains unclear when a revised draft of the bill will be released.
Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), a key architect of the legislation, said in an interview that a draft could still be circulated as soon as Wednesday, but that timing was up to to Thune, and that senators were still weighing whether to include an ethics provision or leave it bracketed for later.
“There’s been some differences of opinion among senators about whether we should distribute a draft with or without the ethics language,” Lummis said. “If a decision is made to do it before there’s a final stamp of approval on ethics, it will come out with brackets saying ethics to be added. But if a decision is made to wait until the ethics language is approved, then it will take a few more days.”
Jordain Carney contributed to this report.
The incoming chair of the Senate Budget Committee said he expects a fight over paying for a new party-line spending bill as House Republicans move forward with a plan that does not offset $95 billion in proposed spending with cuts elsewhere.
Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin is expected to soon inherit the Budget gavel from the late Sen. Lindsey Graham — and with it a key role in managing the budget reconciliation process Republicans intend to use to sidestep Democratic opposition to their latest legislative proposals.
Johnson noted in an interview Wednesday that he has long been one of the Senate’s foremost deficit hawks and “I’ve got other members on the committee that also insist on offsets.”
“That’s the reality that I’ll have to deal with as chairman,” Johnson said. “You know, [Senate Majority Leader John] Thune’s going to have to deal with it. The White House has to deal with it. The House has to deal with it, as well.”
The House and Senate Budget committees play a key role in drafting and advancing fiscal blueprints that pave the way for party-line reconciliation bills, and Johnson could use his influence to force changes to the House proposal. He told reporters Monday, ahead of the House rollout, that identifying offsetting cuts “would certainly be one of my objectives.”
But that risks putting him at odds with Thune, who has voiced concerns that pursuing spending cuts to health care or other sensitive programs could blow back on vulnerable members just before the midterms.
The Senate Budget Committee, however, is stacked with fiscal hawks who will likely want to pay for at least part of the bill.
House GOP leaders are contending with their own band of fiscal hawks, who are upset over the lack of pay-fors included in the spending plan released Wednesday.
Johnson will come face-to-face with some of them Wednesday evening, saying that he would meet with House Budget Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) as well as the House Freedom Caucus.
House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole is headed to the president’s retreat at Camp David as lawmakers assemble a third party-line package that falls short of Donald Trump’s ambitious defense spending target.
Cole (R-Okla.) said he is headed to the Maryland outpost Thursday where he expects to have conversations about defense funding levels and “general things.” Cole was unsure of the full attendance list for the meeting.
Cole acknowledged Wednesday that the House GOP budget resolution released Wednesday morning comes in far under the $350 billion Trump has been calling for on Pentagon spending. The House framework included just $73 billion for defense and intelligence.
Trump has proposed a record-breaking $1.5 trillion for the overall defense budget for the coming fiscal year, and the party-line bill is seen as key to reaching that goal without needing Democratic support.
“I think they’re probably just dealing with political reality there. I haven’t gotten an explanation from them yet,” Cole said Wednesday afternoon. “I am headed out tomorrow to Camp David for a quick discussion and I’m sure that’ll be dealt with then.”
A group of select Budget Committee Republicans, Speaker Mike Johnson, Majority Leader Steve Scalise and White House officials held private meetings at Camp David earlier in the week to nail down a plan for the slimmed-down $95 billion package. Trump was not in attendance.
Budget Committee Republicans were summoned by White House officials and boarded a bus Sunday for the presidential retreat for a 24-hour marathon sprint of budget talks.
Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report.
Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee had harsh criticism for Kathy Ruemmler, the former top counsel for Goldman Sachs, as she testified Wednesday as part of the panel’s ongoing investigation into Jeffrey Epstein.
Speaking to reporters during a break in proceedings, Democratic members of the committee questioned Ruemmler’s credibility and the nature of her ties to the late, convicted sex offender.
“Her responses have been shameful,” Rep. Robert Garcia of California, the committee’s top Democrat, told reporters. “We can all read the emails in the files about her making jokes about massages, about her making jokes about Russian women, about her making jokes about Epstein’s girls. For her to deny that there was any type of real relationship there — I don’t buy that.”
Heading into the transcribed interview Wednesday morning, House Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) said that Ruemmler was “the one that was with [Epstein] until the very end,” and that she worked to “rehabilitate his image.”
Committee members pressed Ruemmler inside the closed-door meeting on the content of her emails, which were released by the Justice Department months ago as part of a trove of Epstein case files, as well as on the gifts she received from Epstein and on the advice that she exchanged with him.
She’s the latest former Democratic official and Wall Street operative to appear before the Oversight panel, which has also brought in former President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Microsoft founder Bill Gates. Ruemmler served as counsel for the Obama administration before leaving for the private sector, where she connected with Epstein while at law firm Latham & Watkins.
Ruemmler told the Oversight Committee that Epstein was a “masterful liar,” that he used her and others to legitimize himself and that it was a “mistake to deal with him,” according to a copy of her opening statement viewed by Blue Light News.
“[If] I had seen or heard any evidence suggesting that he was abusing women or girls, I would have immediately reported him,” she said, according to prepared remarks — adding that she cut ties with Epstein following his 2019 indictment.
But Democrats left the first half of her testimony unsatisfied by her claims that she did not have a friendship with Epstein. “We know that is BS,” Rep. Christian Menefee (D-Texas) told reporters.
“She’s taking no responsibility, and we’re going to continue to grill her,” Rep. Suhas Subramanyam (D-Va.) told reporters. “We don’t care if she’s a Democrat.”
A spokesperson for Ruemmler did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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