Congress
Senate Ag advances crypto bill along party lines
The Senate Agriculture Committee voted along party lines Thursday to advance a landmark cryptocurrency bill, sending the measure to the Senate floor without bipartisan backing.
The committee voted 12-11 to advance so-called crypto market structure legislation, which would create new rules governing how digital tokens are regulated. The bill that the Ag panel approved Thursday, which would grant new crypto regulatory authority to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, would need to eventually be merged with a second part of the bill dealing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that falls under the Senate Banking Committee’s jurisdiction.
The party-line vote came after months of negotiations between Ag Chair John Boozman (R-Ark.) and Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) failed to yield a bipartisan deal. Boozman plowed ahead with a GOP-only bill, saying “there were fundamental policy disagreements” between the two sides and it is now “time to move this process forward.”
“The CFTC is the right agency to regulate the spot trading of digital commodities,” he said in an opening statement. “At a high level, this bill provides a clear definition of a digital commodity, protects innovation and technology, establishes consumer protection safeguards, and equips the agency with the necessary resources to take on this new responsibility.”
Booker, who is a member of a Senate Democratic working group that is negotiating with Republicans on the market structure bill, said Republicans were “walking away from the bipartisan process that produced” a Boozman-Booker discussion draft last year.
“That frustrates me because I see a bipartisan glide path to land this plane, to punch through the end zone,” Booker said.
Boozman said that he remains “committed to continue working with” Democrats on the bill as it moves toward the floor, adding that “what we want is a bipartisan bill.”
The panel voted down several amendments offered by Democrats along party lines, including a provision from Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) that would ban federal officials and their families from issuing or endorsing digital assets. Ethics issues have been a major sticking point in market structure negotiations, as Democrats have pressed for language targeting the Trump family’s crypto businesses.
Republicans also voted to reject a pair of amendments from Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) that would seek to crack down on crypto ATM fraud and ban some crypto firms from receiving a federal bailout, respectively.
Sen. Ron Johnson is sending a letter Monday requesting a conference meeting to discuss the midterm results and a delay in the leadership election.
Johnson has gathered enough signatures to force the meeting under the Senate GOP’s rules and is proposing the gathering for 9 a.m. Tuesday.
“Tuesday’s result was a stunning defeat,” Johnson and his backers write in the letter to Conference Chair Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), a copy of which was obtained by POLITICO. “Holding leadership elections without engaging in a robust discussion and evaluation of how those running for leadership intend to lead would be political malpractice”
Republicans still expect their leadership election to be held Tuesday, where Majority Leader John Thune is so far unopposed to lead the party next year in the minority.
Sen. Chris Murphy announced Friday that he has been released from the hospital after suffering a stroke last week, but will miss “several weeks” of Senate votes while he continues to recover.
“The doctors are very encouraged by the progress I’ve made so far,” the Connecticut Democrat said in a statement. “In order to take my recovery seriously and get back to work on the quickest timeline possible, I will be spending several weeks at a rehabilitation center after being discharged from the hospital today.”
He added that he remains in touch remotely with his staff and colleagues.
Murphy, who was hospitalized last weekend, said Friday that he was “diagnosed with a small bleed in the thalamus region of my brain.” Jose Suarez, the Chief of Neurosciences Critical Care at The Johns Hopkins Hospital, said in a separate statement released by Murphy’s office that the senator “experienced a small hemorrhagic stroke.”
“He has shown tremendous progress, and at the current rate of improvement, we expect that he will make a full recovery following rehabilitation,” Suarez added.
Murphy is the latest senator to suffer a stroke in recent years. Sens. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and Ben Ray Lujan (D-N.M.) were both hospitalized for strokes in 2022. Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), at that time a Senate candidate, also had a stroke in 2022 that he later described as near fatal.
The head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus said his group will still be power brokers in a massive Democratic majority in a strategy memo previewing plans for next term.
“While some in the press have speculated that a majority of this size undermines our influence within the caucus, they have it exactly backwards,” Rep. Greg Casar of Texas said in the Friday memo obtained by Blue Light News. “Big majorities are good for getting big things done. Our goal is not to win a battle against other Democratic caucuses. It is to pass longstanding progressive priorities that bring down costs, root out corruption, and boost wages.”
The CPC will have at least 105 members next term, according to the memo. If Democrats had a narrow majority, progressives — and any other faction in the caucus — could have used their votes as leverage. Now that presumptive speaker Hakeem Jeffries will have as many 30 votes to spare, Democrats broadly are recalibrating their approach next term.
Casar laid out a “three-pronged” strategy for the CPC to “wield our power” in the three-page memo — tackling legislation, oversight and “holding Donald Trump to his word on populist economic policies.”
“Small majorities give corporate special interest groups the ability to block popular populist policies by recruiting a small number of opponents; a big majority gives us the advantage,” he said.
Casar previewed how the CPC can engage with Trump, noting that “one of the few bright spots for bipartisan lawmaking” was a housing bill that banned private equity firms from buying homes. He noted the caucus should push Trump to cap credit card interest rates, lower credit card fees for small businesses and lower prescription drug costs.
“While we oppose [Trump] strongly on the vast majority of fronts, we should send bills to his desk that would lower prices and raise paychecks. If he signs them, good. If he vetoes those bills, that will propel us to a continued Democratic majority and a trifecta where a Democratic president can sign these proposals into law,” he said.
Casar also outlined oversight targets beyond the administration, urging Democrats to specifically investigate corporations that use customer data for “surveillance pricing,” health care companies that are “taking advantage of seniors” through the Medicare Advantage program and artificial intelligence labs who are “putting jobs and lives at risk.”
“By focusing not just on the Trump administration but also on big corporations and billionaires, we will show the American people we are not just anti-Trump but also pro-worker and pro-consumer,” he said.
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