The Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Development Committee included a provision in its bipartisan bill that would temporarily prohibit the Federal Reserve from issuing a central bank digital currency to boost the U.S. housing market
Committee Chairman Tim Scott and Ranking Member Elizabeth Warren, the committee’s top Republican and Democratic leader respectively, introduced the 21st Century Pathways to Housing Act on Monday, which would make it easier to build homes in the United States.
“This bill is not only about cutting regulatory red tape, lowering costs, and expanding housing supply without incurring new expenses, but it’s also about ensuring that people like the single mom who raised me in North Charleston, South Carolina, have greater access to economic opportunity and the American dream of homeownership,” Scott said in a statement.
“This plan includes the overwhelming majority of the Senate’s unanimously supported Pathways to Housing Act, incorporates bipartisan housing ideas from the House, and is a good first step to curb corporate landlords pushing families out of homeownership,” Warren said in her statement.
Neither lawmaker mentioned the CBDC ban, which takes up just two pages of the 303-page bill. Lawmakers had included the ban in a previous bill, and the House passed it as a standalone bill last year, but it has so far not passed Congress.
The section says: “Except as provided in subsection (c), the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve Bank or the Federal Reserve Bank shall not, directly or indirectly through a financial institution or other intermediary, issue or create a central bank digital currency or any digital asset that is materially similar to a central bank digital currency.”
It includes a December 31, 2030 sunset provision and creates exceptions for permissionless private “dollar-denominated” currencies to “fully preserve the privacy protections of physical currencies.”
The White House issued an “Executive Policy Statement” in support of the bill, explicitly supporting CBDC provisions in two paragraphs.
“The administration is emphasizing the inclusion of presidential priorities … to block the development of central bank digital currencies, which could be [sic] poses a significant threat to personal privacy and freedoms,” the statement said.
