A couple of days ago news broke from Politico that Republicans on the House Financial Services and Agriculture Committees were "shopping" a revised version of the historic legislation the two Committees passed last July, H.R. 4763, the Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act. It has been fascinating to see people's responses in the crypto space to this news.

When the legislation was passed last July the biggest takeaway, in my opinion, was that the text was still a work in progress and was going to be amended to address various concerns. It should be noted that this legislation was also passed with bipartisan support which from the outside looking in might seem almost impossible. During the House Financial Services markup, there were several Members who before the vote either said they were voting for it with the hopes of hashing out the final details and improving the bill or that they were withholding their support at this time but that they were going to fully support it when their issue was addressed.

Of the changes that have been made, there are three individual changes that I think should be highlighted. Tweaks have been made to the whistleblower protection part, crypto trading by lawmakers, and a separate bill, H.R. 3572 the Securities Clarity Act, has been added to the legislation. These changes I believe are going to be fantastic for the bill because it does improve on areas of the bill that were considered weaker and that the Senate pointed at and said why they would not vote on it.

Another huge reason why there should be a ton of optimism is because of the way that this is being handled. All parties involved have not commented on these changes or acknowledged that they have occurred. Members who voted for the bill have also received staff-level briefings over these changes and more importantly were NOT allowed to take the draft text out of the room. In recent years Congress has been full of leaks on big pieces of legislation but historically that has not been the case. With everyone keeping their mouths shut it shows that both sides do expect to reach a compromise in a way that should get this bill voted on in a bipartisan fashion on the House Floor.

If the Committees and both sides of the aisle can this it would be monumental. For the last few years, it had seemed that the Senate was going to pass something, and as someone who works in the House that was far from what we wanted. See whichever side passes the first version essentially can bully or put the other chamber on their backfoot. This increases the likelihood of the legislation being voted on by the other chamber as well as the other chamber not being able to have too much influence when it comes to changes. Certain Senate Leaders, mainly Senate Banking Chair Sherrod Brown, have been extremely vocal about the previous versions of this bill and said that he would make sure it was never voted on in the Senate as is. With legislation that is partisan, only passed by one side of the aisle, this is much more common, especially with the House under Republican rule and the Senate under Democrat rule.

Since this is House Financial Chairman McHenry's last year, he is not running for reelection in 2024, and he has made this the number one priority of this Congress getting this legislation passed and signed into law is a huge and extremely motivating factor. With how elections will turn out being anyone's guess and with how locked up legislation has been in this Congress it would be even more impressive and definitely something that Chairman McHenry could hang his hat on in his retirement.