The Republican Party's bill is about to fail, and Republican senators are blaming the Democrats.

Written by: Mathew Di Salvo, Bitcoin Magazine

Translated by: AididiaoJP, Foreisght News

Pro-crypto Republican senator Cynthia Lummis has turned the spotlight back on the Democrats. The focus is still on the long-delayed crypto market structure bill: the Clarity Act.

She did not close the door completely. The bill still has a chance of passing, but only if the Democrats make further concessions.

On Tuesday, Lummis responded on X to a report from Semafor. The report cited several Republican senators' judgments: after the Senate reconvenes next week, this bill is unlikely to pass. Senators had hoped to cast a crucial vote before the five-week August recess but it was postponed. The Senate is now set to hold a procedural vote to end debate on the Clarity Act next week, known as cloture. If this hurdle is cleared, the bill will have a chance for a real debate; if not, the agenda is essentially dead.

Bitcoin Magazine conveyed a more significant statement from Lummis: if it fails next week, "we will not have another realistic opportunity before the end of this decade."

Translated into legislative terms, it means there will be no second round of hope during this session. With midterm elections approaching, attention will shift to the campaign. The crypto market structure, a lengthy and intricate bill that banks and the crypto community are eyeing, risks taking years if the window is missed.

Lummis has made the reasons for failure clear

She wrote in a post: "If this bill fails, it won't be due to ethical concerns, but because the Democrats have not embraced a bipartisan bill with the Republicans — one that protects consumers, solidifies America's leadership in digital assets, and empowers law enforcement to combat illegal finance."

She stated that the Democrats are still "demanding amendments," some of which could allow future regulators to "squeeze the crypto industry."

"If we can bridge these divides, I am confident we can pass Clarity. But it requires further compromise from the Democrats, not the White House."

This is not the first time she has pushed blame across the aisle. She mentioned during the summer that if Clarity were to die, it would be killed by the Democrats. She and other pro-crypto lawmakers have consistently named those they believe are deliberately stalling the bill. At the end of July, she expressed more frustration on a podcast: since last Labor Day, working with the Democrats to amend it, the draft has ballooned from about 300 pages to nearly 700 pages, much of the additions stemming from Democratic demands; the last-minute amendments were "ridiculous, I'm tired of being played."

In early August, she told Fox Business that she had been negotiating overnight with the Democrats, and the president had accepted an "ethical clause that has not been agreed to by any president in history," but the Democrats wanted more. "We will vote. If it dies, it's the Democrats who killed it. I’ve given them all the regulation I can over the past eleven years." The "eleven years" she referred to is her own sense of time; the intense amendments with the Democrats have occurred over the past eleven months.

The bill itself aims to delineate three areas

The Clarity Act aims to establish regulations that may sound like technical details but ultimately determine whether US crypto companies can keep their headquarters domestically. It delineates boundaries for digital assets: what counts as securities, under the Securities and Exchange Commission; what counts as commodities, under the Commodity Futures Trading Commission; and stablecoins as a separate category. The House passed it last July. The Senate has stalled for a year, not due to a lack of discussion, but because they can't agree on two key issues.

The first issue is stablecoin earnings. Banking lobbyists do not want crypto companies to pay interest or similar returns to customers on stablecoin balances, fearing deposits would be withdrawn. Crypto companies see this as a core product: if users put cash into USD on-chain, why can’t they earn returns? The two sides have been clashing on "whether stablecoins can generate returns for customers," which is one of the biggest reasons for the delays this year.

The second issue is ethics. A new draft began circulating in July, prohibiting government officials from promoting or profiting from crypto. Democrats have continuously leveraged the Trump family's crypto ventures to assert that they should not legislate for the industry without first addressing conflict of interest. On the Republican side, the argument is that ethical clauses have already been added, and they even require public officials to sell digital assets or place them in blind trusts; further amendments risk turning what is meant to prevent conflict of interest into a tool for regulators to choke the industry.

Despite the ethical amendments, there remains a faction of Democrats who feel the draft is insufficient and still want amendments. There’s also a layer of political calculation within the party: while campaigning against Trump using crypto profits, they are also trying to sit down and set rules for the crypto industry, which presents a narrative conflict. Reports have noted that some Democrats are concerned that reaching an agreement on Clarity would weaken their ability to highlight Trump's conflicts of interest.

The White House is pushing for progress. Donald Trump stated in August that for the US to remain the "undisputed leader in bitcoin and crypto," this "very, very powerful legislation" needs to pass. He wants the US to remain at the center of digital assets without diverting companies, talent, and listing entities to clearer regulatory environments like Singapore or Switzerland. Lummis has made the responsibility very clear: the issue is not the White House asking for more, but the Democrats needing to yield further.

Those Republican colleagues in Semafor suggesting the bill is set to fail, and Lummis publicly asserting "it can still pass," are not contradicting each other. One is preparing for failure, while the other is putting pressure on the other side of the negotiation table. The votes needed for cloture are more demanding than a simple majority. Without enough Democrats on board, Republicans cannot gather the necessary votes themselves.

For the industry, the costs of the delays surrounding Clarity are already very concrete. Companies are unsure whether the tokens they issue will later be classified as securities, stablecoin products hesitate to include returns in user agreements, and exchanges and custodians oscillate between two sets of regulations. For each delay in the bill, there’s an additional round of "first getting licenses overseas" migration. When Lummis mentions the ten-year window, she signals that the next opportunity for political alignment is unlikely to come quickly.

If the Democrats insist on further amendments, their reasons are also publicly known: consumer protection, government officials must not profit from crypto, and law enforcement must have teeth. Lummis acknowledges that these topics have been included in the bipartisan text; she just does not accept giving regulators a discretionary power that could "kill the industry."

The timeline is already very tight. If the vote does not happen before the recess, next week's procedural vote is the next hurdle. Whether that door opens or not depends on whether enough Democrats are willing to sign off on the current text. Lummis has laid the failure plan out clearly: if it fails, it's not because of ethical discussions, but because the other side did not come to agreement.