WASHINGTON, D.C. — Senator Cynthia Lummis stated that she felt ‘distraught, baffled and disappointed’ regarding the Senate’s failure last week to advance a crucial procedural vote for cryptocurrency market structure legislation.
Speaking Tuesday at CoinDesk’s Policy & Regulation event, Lummis pointed the finger at Democrats for the legislative setback, noting that the measure actually stemmed from cross-party negotiations.
‘The core issue, as I view it, is that Democrats hold a deeper animosity toward President [Donald] Trump than they appreciate sound policy, opting instead to let their visceral disdain for President Trump block the enactment of vital regulatory legislation prior to the midterms,’ she remarked. ‘They made that choice… put the responsibility squarely on the Democrats.’
The Clarity Act—a market structure bill designed to establish clearer oversight boundaries for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission over digital assets, including spot markets—stalled last Tuesday after every single Democrat alongside three Republicans voted against the procedural motion. (A fourth Republican, Senator Thom Tillis, flipped his vote to ‘no’ at the eleventh hour due to procedural factors).
She explained that the legislation itself emerged as a bipartisan effort, swelling from roughly 300 pages to more than 600 pages after Democratic lawmakers requested additions concerning safeguards like bankruptcy protections.
‘Every single Democrat voted nay, without exception. I see various post-vote narratives trying to shift the blame onto Brian Armstrong… or accusing the crypto sector of being overly aggressive, or finding anyone else to point fingers at, including President [Donald] Trump because he generated substantial revenue from a memecoin before taking office,’ she noted.
During a mid-year financial filing in 2026, Trump disclosed generating $1.4 billion from diverse crypto initiatives throughout 2025, which marked his initial year as president.
Nonetheless, Lummis acknowledged Democratic Senators Angela Alsobrooks and Kirsten Gillibrand—with Gillibrand serving as her longtime co-sponsor on crypto bills—for acting as ‘principled negotiators’ during discussions over the measure.
House perspective
Earlier that day, during a separate panel, House Financial Services Committee Chairman French Hill and Representative Ritchie Torres both addressed the breakdown of the Clarity Act vote.
Both representatives maintained that the Clarity Act, or a subsequent variation of it, remains essential.
‘In my view, the Clarity Act furnished statutory legal certainty regarding both the Howey test, fundraising inquiries, and the treatment of software developers, which is why we ought to keep pushing the debate here instead of dwelling on a failed cloture vote in the Senate, focusing instead on charting a path to pass this with bipartisan backing because we cannot achieve certainty otherwise,’ Hill stated.
Conversely, Torres noted that Trump’s cryptocurrency connections created hurdles for Democrats inclined to support the bill.
‘It is difficult to say definitively. My personal perspective… although the defeat of the Clarity Act stemmed from multiple variables, I firmly believe that absent Donald Trump, we likely would have secured ‘yes’ votes from both Democrats and Republicans,’ Torres observed. ‘The moment the president launched his personal memecoin, it generated a political dilemma for Democrats.’
Hill conceded that Trump’s memecoin ‘undoubtedly poisoned the atmosphere of the debate’ for Democrats, though he reminded listeners that the memecoin existed previously when both the House and Senate successfully advanced the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins Act (GENIUS Act) on a bipartisan basis, alongside the House passing its version of the Clarity Act.
Following this year’s midterm elections, Hill noted, Trump will transition into a ‘lame duck.’ Consequently, both parties will need to cooperate to pass the Clarity Act if lawmakers intend to oversee the crypto-related actions of Trump or any future executive, as well as regulate the broader digital asset sector, he argued.
‘If the purpose of Clarity is to regulate the digital asset industry, foster fair, orderly, and efficient markets, and protect consumers and investors, then it represents a bipartisan agenda,’ Torres concluded. ‘Once it shifts toward focusing on the most polarizing figure in American politics, it transforms into something else entirely, and that dynamic presents a real hurdle.’
Originally published at https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2026/09/22/democrats-chose-visceral-hatred-for-donald-trump-over-crypto-clarity-act-lummis-says.
