Senator Cynthia Lummis said the crypto industry should "pin it on the Democrats" in her first public remarks after last week's failed Clarity Act vote.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Senator Cynthia Lummis said she was "dismayed, dumbfounded and saddened" that the Senate couldn't advance a key procedural vote for crypto market structure legislation last week.

Lummis blamed Democrats for the bill's failure at an appearance Tuesday at CoinDesk's Policy & Regulation event, while saying that the bill was the result of negotiations between members of both parties.

"The problem was, as I see it, Democrats hate President [Donald] Trump more than they like good policy, and the way I see it is they chose their visceral hatred for President Trump and denied the opportunity to pass important policy legislation before a midterm," she said. "They chose that … pin it on the Democrats."

The Clarity Act, a market structure bill that aimed to more clearly define how the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission should oversee the crypto markets, including spot markets, last Tuesday, after every Democrat and three Republicans voted against a procedural vote (a fourth Republican, Senator Thom Tillis, changed his vote to a "no" at the last minute for procedural reasons).

The bill itself was a bipartisan product which grew from some 300 pages to over 600, she said, after Democrats asked for provisions addressing issues like bankruptcy protections, among other items.

"Every single Democrat voted no, every single one. I see some of the spin post-vote blaming it on Brian Armstrong … or blaming it on the industry for being too aggressive or anybody else they can blame, President [Donald] Trump because he made a bunch of money on a memecoin before he was president," she said.

Trump revealed in a mid-year financial disclosure in 2026 that he made $1.4 billion off of his various crypto ventures in 2025, the first year of his presidency.

Lummis did say Tuesday that she credited Democrat Senators Angela Alsobrooks and Kirsten Gillibrand — the latter of whom has been her longtime partner in sponsoring crypto legislation — for being "honest brokers" in the negotiations over the bill.

House view

Earlier in the day, House Financial Services Committee Chairman French Hill and Congressman Ritchie Torres both spoke to the failure of the Clarity Act vote in another session.

Both lawmakers argued that the Clarity Act, or some future version of it, was still needed.

"The Clarity Act, in my judgment, gave legal statutory certainty to both [the Howey test and fundraising questions and to how code writers should be treated], and that's why I think we should still be arguing here, not be moping around about the failure of a cloture vote in the Senate, but instead mapping out how we are going to get this passed on a bipartisan basis, because we don't get certainty without it," Hill said.

But Trump's crypto ties made it difficult for Democrats to vote for the bill, Torres said.

"It's hard to know for sure. My personal opinion … even though the failure of Clarity had multiple causes, I am convinced that if it were not for Donald Trump, we likely could have seen both Democrats and Republicans get to yes," Torres said. "Once the president issued his personal memecoin, that created a political problem for Democrats."

Hill acknowledged that Trump's memecoin "absolutely did poison the well of the debate" for Democrats, but said the memecoin also existed last year, when the House and Senate both advanced the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins Act (GENIUS Act) on a bipartisan basis, and the House passed its version of the Clarity Act.

After this year's midterm election, Hill said, Trump becomes a "lame duck." Republicans and Democrats would need to work together to pass Clarity if lawmakers want to police Trump or a future president's behavior around crypto, as well as police the crypto industry more generally, he argued.

"If Clarity is about regulating the crypto industry and creating fair and orderly, efficient markets and providing protection for consumers and investors, it's a bipartisan path," Torres said. "If it becomes about the most polarizing personality in American politics, then it becomes something else, and I think that's the dynamic that's challenging."

UPDATE (Sept. 22, 2026, 22:30 UTC): Adds additional detail to first section; adds section quoting Congressmen French Hill and Ritchie Torres.

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