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Ahmed Barakat
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House Republican leaders have removed the weeks of Sept. 21 and Sept. 28 from the voting calendar, cutting eight previously scheduled legislative days and leaving representatives with just four voting days before they leave Washington on Sept. 17. The shortened calendar sharply reduces the odds of finishing the CLARITY Act before the Nov. 3 midterm elections, even as the Senate moves toward its own procedural vote days earlier.
House Majority Whip Tom Emmer’s office notified Republican members that leadership had scrubbed the weeks of Sept. 21 and Sept. 28 from the schedule. Leadership did not cite the CLARITY Act as the reason for the change, but the compressed session leaves little runway for the House of Representatives to process anything the Senate sends back.
The chamber passed its version of the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, H.R. 3633, in 2025. That bill would split oversight of the U.S. digital asset market between the SEC and CFTC while setting registration rules for crypto trading platforms. It is the closest thing to comprehensive crypto regulation Congress has produced to date.
Senators have since built their own text with provisions absent from the House-passed version. If the Senate advances an amended bill, the House must either sign off on the changes or the two chambers must hash out a unified draft, and any agreed language still needs approval from both sides before it lands on Trump’s desk.
With representatives departing just two days after the Senate’s expected vote, the House isn’t expected to resume regular legislative work until after the midterm elections, and no emergency return or calendar revision has been announced.
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Pre-Midterm Odds Were Already Thin
Solana Policy Institute CEO Miller Whitehouse-Levine had previously placed the bill’s chance of becoming law before the midterms at around 10%. He is pointing to the limited number of legislative days and unresolved Senate negotiations.
Those talks have spanned presidential crypto ethics provisions, anti-money-laundering requirements, state enforcement authority, decentralized finance treatment, and stablecoin rewards. Now, Senate Republicans cannot clear the 60-vote cloture threshold without Democratic support.
Stablecoin rewards remain one of the thorniest sticking points. The Senate text would bar payments based solely on holding a stablecoin balance while permitting rewards tied to transactions or other activity, a distinction that matters for how exchanges structure yield products.
Banks argue that activity-based incentives could let crypto platforms mimic bank-like returns without carrying equivalent capital and liquidity requirements, while crypto companies say a strict ban would choke off legitimate revenue-sharing and dampen competition in dollar-backed payments.
The fight follows the GENIUS Act, which set federal rules for payment stablecoin issuers but left third-party distribution questions unresolved.
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What Comes Next for the CLARITY Act?
The immediate checkpoint is the Senate’s expected Sept. 15 cloture vote, which requires at least 60 votes and would open the door to debate, amendments, and further procedural votes, not final passage. Given the House’s Sept. 17 departure, there’s essentially no buffer for a drawn-out Senate amendment process without pushing the bill past the election.
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If the CLARITY Act passes, Bitcoin could benefit from clearer and more predictable U.S. crypto regulations. This could encourage banks, institutions, and financial firms to increase their Bitcoin exposure. Greater regulatory certainty may also boost investor confidence and strengthen Bitcoin’s commodity status.
If the current Congress ends without a signed bill, lawmakers will have to restart the process from scratch next session. A post-election lame-duck window could theoretically offer another shot, but whether party leaders grant floor time will hinge on how the midterm elections reshape the balance of power in both chambers.
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