Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) on Wednesday slammed a recent GOP push to bring stablecoin legislation to the floor, accusing Republicans of attempting to force a vote before finishing negotiations with Democrats.
“You can’t throw us in the corner,” he said in an interview with MeidasTouch. “You can’t try to f‑‑‑ us and then say like, ‘Hey, deal with it.’ That’s just not going to work, especially when you still need our votes no matter what.”
Gallego and eight other crypto-friendly Democrats who previously backed the GENIUS Act pulled their support for the bill over the weekend, after Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) moved to expedite a vote last week.
The GENIUS Act is the Senate’s version of legislation to create a regulatory framework for payment stablecoins, cryptocurrencies that are tied to assets like the U.S. dollar to maintain a more stable price.
The bill advanced out of the Senate Banking Committee in March with the support of five Democrats, including Gallego, who serves as ranking member on the panel’s digital assets subcommittee.
However, the Arizona Democrat emphasized Wednesday that he and his colleagues voted the GENIUS Act out of committee in the “spirit of bipartisanship,” with the hope of making further adjustments to the legislation.
“All of sudden, the language changed,” Gallego said of the new floor text released Thursday. “They backtracked on some of the stuff we had already approved. They weren’t even moving forward with further legislation. And then they announced the date of the first vote.”
“I think the purpose of that was really to put Democrats in a bad position and force us to vote for it,” he continued.
Gallego and the eight others who pulled their support for the bill argued that it lacks sufficiently strong provisions on anti-money laundering, national security and a host of other issues.
“I just cannot allow them to just jam us and pass bad legislation that has open loopholes that would create really bad situations for consumers, for investors, all these kind of things,” he said.
“Especially when we’re here,” he added. “We’re here to work. We’re here to speak and try to come up with a good bipartisan bill. But don’t try to f‑‑‑ us on it. That’s not going to happen.”
