Anti-Cbdc Surveillance State Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. HIMES. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from California for this opportunity to speak because this is one of the most ignorant things I have seen this House produce in a very long time.

It stuns me, frankly, that my good friends, Congressmen Hill, Steil, and Barr, are associating themselves with this bill.

Let's be super clear about this. Nobody knows whether a CBDC is a good idea. A couple of years ago, I wrote a white paper on CBDC, and I concluded that it is not clear. The arguments for and against are being mooted today.

Yes, it could be abused by an overwhelming executive if we had a President, for example, who showed disdain for the Constitution, who was comfortable acting illegally, and who wasn't comfortable with judicial rulings. It is hard for us to imagine that President, but this could be abused.

It could be used for monetary policy, a bad idea. It could be used for taxation, a bad idea. It could also, by the way, be a trusted electronic currency for an unbanked population. It could be a way of supporting the primacy of the American dollar. I don't know.

The truth is that nobody on that side of the aisle or this side of the aisle knows either, but we are going to forbid any inquiry around this to figure out whether it is a good idea or a bad idea. We are going to say we can't even research it.

This is a stunning definition of ignorance. Imagine if 100 years ago we had said that electricity is scary. It can kill you and is produced by burning coal, which is dangerous, so we are not going to research electricity or atomic power or the automobile. Tens of thousands of Americans die every year because of the automobile.

We don't know, and the majority says let's not learn because they have some ideological fixation that, frankly, I don't understand.

Two hundred years ago, the private sector, which my friends on the other side of the aisle hold up, had issued currency. It was called scrip. Companies and banks issued their own currency, and this country learned that this was a terrible idea and that, in fact, the central bank should issue currency, which is one of the reasons we are who we are today. You might give the CBDC at least some benefit of the doubt instead of being ignorant about whether we want to know the truth.

We need to stop this. We held this institution up for 2 days over a bizarre MAGA obsession which is rooted in insanity and ignorance. Don't even find out the answer. The ranking member said that this is like a boy who is hiding from the truth. I have another metaphor. This is like a young 5-year-old who is angry and covers his eyes and ears and believes he is invisible.

Just imagine my good friend Andy Barr saying we are not like China, we are not like--what if there is a sterling or--

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Mr. HIMES. Mr. Speaker, for all the rah-rah patriotism, think about this. Again, I will acknowledge that we don't know if this is a good idea or a bad idea, and we ought to find out.

Let's imagine that the European Union, which Mr. Barr wants to dissociate himself with, puts out a CBDC that picks up real usage. Now all of a sudden, we have a threat to the dollar because we are still handing around pieces of paper because the Republican majority said we shouldn't even research something that may or may not be a good part of a modern, 21st century economy.

Don't go with ignorance. You are too smart for that. Don't risk putting us behind on something that could be really important to the future of the American dollar. Vote ``no'' on this ignorant bill.

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