White House Could Pass Clarity Act on July 4 – ‘A Tremendous Birthday Present for America’

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The US administration is reportedly pondering a two-month deadline for Congress to pass the Clarity Act, looking at July 4, the country’s Independence Day, as a fitting date.

Patrick Witt, executive director of the President’s Council of Advisors for Digital Assets, said that the US Congress could pass the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act in two months’ time. He told CoinDesk’s Consensus Miami conference that “we’re targeting July 4^th. I think that would be a tremendous birthday present for America, celebrating our 250^th.”

Witt went on to provide a potential timeline. According to it, the Senate Banking Committee markup would happen this month. Next, there’d be four working Senate weeks in June for floor passage, followed by a US House of Representatives vote before Independence Day.

“There’s not a lot of slack left in the rope right now,” Witt said. “But it is an achievable timeline.”

Recently, US Senator Thom Tillis said he planned to ask Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott “to move forward with scheduling a markup when [the Senate] get back” in session on May 11.

Have obstacles been removed?

The House of Representatives passed a version of the bill in July last year, but the Senate’s version has faced obstacles. The Senate Banking Committee is the crucial authority that delayed the markup after Coinbase stepped back from its initial support as a response to a provision that prohibits crypto exchanges from paying stablecoin yields.

Now, Witt argues that the stablecoin yield issue “is closed.” “Crypto is unhappy, banks are unhappy, but they’re both about equally unhappy,” he said. “And so we know that we got the right compromise.”

However, there’s still the issue of the conflict-of-interest provision, which is a massive point of contention between the current administration and the Democratic Party. But Witt argued that the best course of action is to accept rules that apply “across the board, from the president all the way down to the brand new intern on Capitol Hill.”

At the same time, the regulators shouldn’t accept any rule that picks out one office or officeholder, that “target[s] anyone’s family, any one particular politician.” “I’m optimistic that we’re going to be able to close that out,” Witt said.