Speaker Mike Johnson said he hopes to try again Wednesday on a procedural vote that would allow the House to take up a slate of cryptocurrency bills after GOP hard-liners tanked the measure Tuesday afternoon.
Republicans are “still having conversations, answering questions for people,” Johnson told reporters leaving the Capitol.
Asked how he might win over conservative holdouts, the Louisiana Republican said “it’s a priority of the White House, the Senate and the House to do all of these crypto bills.”
House conservatives are calling on GOP leaders to amend a Senate-passed bill to regulate so-called stablecoins or package it with two other digital assets bills that were slated for floor votes this week in a bid to force the Senate to take all of them up together.
But Johnson said leaving the Capitol Tuesday that “we have to do them in succession,” suggesting that GOP leaders won’t seek to directly link the bills in one package.
A combined package that ties the Senate’s stablecoin legislation with the two other bills — a sweeping crypto market structure bill and a third measure that would ban a central bank digital currency — would likely be dead on arrival in the upper chamber.
“We cannot stuff these into one package,” one senior House Republican said, noting that it would trigger a host of issues.
