The senator from Pennsylvania, Pat Toomey, one of the legislators who supported the modification of the language around cryptocurrencies in the recently approved infrastructure law, He said the United States should lead the world in adopting a digital currency issued by a central bank.
In a November 23 interview with David Westin of Bloomberg, Toomey said the US dollar should have “the most sophisticated capabilities of any currency in the world,” because the country could benefit from a digital dollar. However, the senator said that the implementation of any digital currency by the US central bank should not rely on the Federal Reserve like a traditional bank for retail accounts, citing privacy concerns.
“The idea of having a tokenized dollar that is capable of being exchanged on a peer-to-peer basis on a platform where developers can innovate and develop new products and services … I think there is a strong case for that,” Toomey said.
The Pennsylvania senator added that would vote for Jerome Powell’s nomination for a second term as Fed chairman. Toomey cited Powell’s role in stabilizing US financial markets during the first months of the pandemic, as well as the fact that he has been “in action for some time.”
Toomey, one of fifty Republican lawmakers currently in the Senate, crosses partisan lines by supporting President Joe Biden’s appointment of Powell. At a time when partisan politics in the United States appears to be present in every piece of legislation that is introduced and the Democratic Party controls each chamber of Congress by a slim majority, every vote counts when it comes to enacting policy.
Toomey was behind a bipartisan effort to amend some of the provisions of the recently passed infrastructure law so that they do not apply to developers, miners and others in the cryptocurrency space. The bill was eventually passed in both the Senate and House of Representatives without any clarification on cryptocurrencies, but lawmakers introduced legislation on November 18 to “fix” their tax filing requirements.
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