The next steps in the United States Senate around the CLARITY bill are largely clear, but voting on September 15 does not mean that the bill will pass directly. According to Cody Carbone, Chief Executive Officer of The Encryption Industry Organization of the United States, this day is more like a formal launch of the Senate review process than the time when the Bill’s fate will finally come to light.

September 15 is not final.

According to his presentation, John Thune, leader of the Senate majority party, had scheduled the voting before the August recess. According to Carbone, on September 15, the procedure would probably be initiated, but the vote itself was not a vote on the final adoption of the bill.

He indicated that this was closer to the procedural move around the debate procedure, which was to move the Senate into the follow-up review phase. Once this step has been completed, the Senate will still have to deal with the amendments and proceed to a subsequent vote before the bill can be voted upon in the final chamber.

48 to 72 hours advance.

Carbone expects that, after 15 September, parliamentarians will have about three weeks before the elections to move the bill forward. He gave two possible paths.

If contentious issues are coordinated before voting, the pace of progress of the bill in the Senate may be significantly accelerated, even if the Senate phase is completed within 48 to 72 hours of the voting in the proceedings, then submitted to the Chamber of Deputies the following week and further submitted to the President for signature.

In another case, however, internal consultations within the Senate continued to grow, and the process was close to the end of the three-week window. According to him, the current pace of the bill remains unclear.

Ethics is still the biggest drag.

Among the remaining disputes, Carbone listed ethical provisions as the most critical resistance, above the rules for the stabilization of currency gains and the relevant elements of the Act on Regulatory Determination of Block Chains. In his view, if ethical issues were not addressed, it would be difficult for the bill to obtain sufficient votes to move forward.

He revealed that Senator Thom Tillis and Ruben Gallego had submitted new texts of ethical provisions to the White House before the August recess and were still under review. The White House has yet to make a public statement on this matter. A stronger set of ethical provisions, previously proposed by the White House, had earlier been rejected by the Democrats.

As for the other issues, Carbone believes that BRCA is working relatively well. Recent expressions of support by law enforcement agencies have given more impetus to the content between the two parties. However, he also mentioned that the industry still needed to continue to communicate with senators outside the Banking Commission, as some parliamentarians had long been affected by the community banking system and were not familiar with the subject of encryption.

Industry concerns for legislative certainty

Carbone also stated that even if the bill was ultimately not passed, United States regulators might continue to push for encryption regulation through SEC and CFTC rule-making. In his view, however, there was a greater need for the industry to provide a more stable institutional basis for parliamentary legislation.

He viewed the current phase as a key window for the United States to gain ownership of encryption policy and suggested that other countries might continue to advance the relevant rule-making if Congress were to delay the completion of legislation.