Genius Act
Floor Speech
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. DURBIN. On another topic, over the weekend, President Trump hosted a military parade to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army and, coincidentally, his 79th birthday.
Spending up to $45 million of taxpayers' money on this kind of pomp and circumstance, while at the same time proposing a budget to eviscerate medical research for the military and to take health insurance away from 16 million Americans is not a cause for national celebration.
Meanwhile, the President's crypto business unfolds. Throughout his first term, President Trump was officially skeptical of crypto currency. In a social media post from July 11, 2019, the President said:
I am not a fan of Bitcoin and other Cryptocurrencies, which are not money, and whose value is highly volatile and based on thin air. Unregulated Crypto Assets can facilitate unlawful behavior, including drug trade and other illegal activity.
That is a quote from the President in his first term. Once the President figured out how to personally make this part of his investment portfolio, his tune changed.
This is how President Trump is using the unregulated crypto industry to enrich himself and his family. Three days before he took office, President Trump launched his meme coin, a novelty item similar to baseball cards or Beanie Babies. Yet they hold no intrinsic value.
Meme coins are risky and highly volatile. Despite the risk, many investors purchased President Trump's meme coin, and in the first few weeks after its launch, the President, in his second term, profited up to $100 million in trading fees, while more than 200,000 investors lost money. There has never been a precedent for anything like this in the history of the Presidency.
Then President Trump auctioned off access to himself by hosting a ``crypto gala'' dinner here in Washington. The President made a whopping $148 million just off this dinner, from 220 investors willing to pay for face time with the President. But nearly half of the ``winners'' of this meme coin competition were still ``losers.'' About 95 attendees suffered a net $8.95 million loss by purchasing President Trump's meme coin. In total, 764,000 investors lost money to President Trump's meme coin scam.
But his corruption does not stop there. His family started its own crypto firm now, World Liberty Financial, and, in March, they launched their own stablecoin, right as the Senate was working on the GENIUS Act, legislation to regulate--so-called regulate--the stablecoin market.
Conveniently, this legislation allows the President and his family to continue owning and issuing stablecoins. There has never been anything like this in the history of the Presidency. Passing the GENIUS Act will help the stablecoin market grow tenfold, over the next 3 years, to a $2 trillion market.
I am going to vote no on this legislation when it comes up this week. We prohibit Members of Congress from activity in crypto currency. The same should be true for the Presidency. Why are we having two different standards? I think the answer is obvious.
That means, if the Senate passes this legislation tomorrow, it would give Congress's blessing for President Trump and his family to further enrich themselves, with very little protection for consumers.
President Trump's crypto dealings, reportedly, account for nearly 40 percent of his net worth. All of the years and decades of investment notwithstanding, 40 percent of President Trump's net worth has been generated in just a few months in the second term of his Presidency with this cryptocurrency. In just a few months, the family--the Trump family--has pulled in approximately $1 billion from crypto--$1 billion.
Tomorrow's vote on the GENIUS Act could bring us closer to enabling President Trump's latest scam. This is shameful; it is corrupt-- especially since we could have stopped this from happening if we had conducted an open amendment process, as Leader Thune promised. We could have had amendments on the floor that would have brought real regulation to this industry. Instead, we have phony regulation.
I filed an amendment to crack down on ATM operators who are scamming seniors out of their life savings with crypto machines. My amendment would have created guardrails to prevent crypto ATM fraud. Approximately 13 States have done so, and we should do so on a national basis.
But we won't have that opportunity. They have foreclosed all amendments to this bill. We can't even debate it on the floor and ask for a vote.
Instead, the GENIUS Act will allow the crypto scam to continue at the expense of unsuspecting Americans and to the enrichment of the President and his family.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source