Spending more than two decades in Congress, I saw firsthand how legislative momentum can propel our country forward — and how legislative inertia can leave us scrambling to catch up. Today, Congress stands at a crossroads: the United States can remain the world’s technological and financial capital or give it all away, potentially to adversaries who are mounting an active challenge to U.S dominance.
The crypto market structure legislation currently moving through Congress, the Clarity Act, is unlike anything we’ve seen since the Telecommunications Act of 1996: a large-scale, forward-looking effort to embrace technological change and introduce consumer safeguards for a nascent technology. Like that earlier landmark law, this effort enjoys broad bipartisan support and requires coordination across multiple committees. And that only happens when Congress recognizes the high stakes.
For too long, American financial policy has been in a reactive crouch. Since the 2008 financial crisis, virtually every major piece of legislation – from Dodd-Frank to subsequent banking reforms – has been backward-looking, designed to address past crises rather than prepare for the next frontier. While these measures serve important purposes, they’ve left us with a regulatory framework built for yesterday’s risks, not tomorrow’s opportunities.
