Senate Democrats on Thursday voted down a procedural motion that would allow the upper chamber to take up landmark GOP-led cryptocurrency legislation, delivering a stunning blow to Republicans on one of their first major policy pushes since clinching a trifecta.
The upper chamber voted 48-49 not to proceed on the crypto bill, squashing the effort following a chaotic week of negotiations in which the GOP backers of the legislation sought to win over a group of key Democratic holdouts.
All Democrats and three Republicans — including Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Josh Hawley of Missouri — voted against the effort, which required 60 votes to advance. Democratic negotiators pushed to delay the vote until next week to give them more time to circulate potential changes with members, but GOP leaders plowed ahead.
“We need time,” said Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), who voted for a previous version of the bill in committee and helped lead negotiations for Democrats this week. “We’re not shutting down. We don’t want to shut this down to the point where we are ending all this work we have put into it. We want to bring this economy and this economy and this innovation to the United States.”
The vote is a major loss for Senate Majority Leader John Thune and other pro-crypto Republicans, and it could jeopardize a broader GOP effort to advance several pieces of industry-friendly digital assets legislation this year. Thune voted against the bill and entered a motion to reconsider, which will allow him to bring it back up on the floor.
Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.), the lead sponsor of the bill, said on the Senate floor that voting against the motion was a vote “to kill the crypto industry here in America, and it’s a shame.” He and other Republicans said Democrats should vote in favor of the procedural motion, which would have allowed for more time ahead of a vote on final passage.
“If senators would like the opportunity to make further modification to the bill, I encourage them to vote for cloture,” Thune said on the Senate floor Thursday morning. “Once we’re on the bill, we can discuss changes here on the floor. We’ve had an open process on this bill so far, so why stop now?”
The legislation would create the first-ever U.S. regulatory framework for digital tokens known as stablecoins whose value is pegged to the dollar. The bill has previously drawn bipartisan support, but it hit a roadblock over the weekend when nine likely Democratic supporters said they would not support the most recent version introduced by GOP leaders ahead of a floor vote.
Key Republicans including Hagerty and Sen. Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming spent much of the week trying to win those holdouts over, holding a series of closed-door meetings to negotiate changes that could appeal to Democrats. But the talks didn’t yield a tangible deal in time to win over enough Democrats.
Democratic holdouts who weren't directly involved in negotiations this week said in the hours leading up to the vote that they were in the dark about any potential deal.
"I'm not going to vote for something if I don't know what's in it," said Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.), who signed onto the Democratic statement over the weekend that said the most recent version of the bill was insufficient. "We've gone through versions before where they say something's in the text and then it's not there in the way we thought it should be there."
The vote is a victory for Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who has been against the GOP-led stablecoin effort.
"The only version of this bill that we have seen is one that the Republicans put out, and it has four major areas that are problems," Warren told reporters ahead of the vote Thursday. She said it would "supercharge Donald Trump's corruption," put "national security at risk," undercut consumer protection and run "a substantial risk of eventually blowing up the U.S. economy."
Pro-crypto Democrats said they are still committed to striking a deal that could advance.
"While we've made meaningful progress on the GENIUS Act, the work is not yet complete, and I simply cannot in good conscience ask my colleagues to vote for this legislation when the text isn't yet finished,” Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), a key Democratic holdout who was helping lead negotiations this week, said in a statement. “I remain fully committed to getting this right. I plan to continue working with my colleagues to strengthen this legislation and move it forward in a way that promotes innovation while protecting the interests of the American people.”
