CLARITY Act crypto bill: 11 votes short five days before the midterms

The CLARITY Act crypto bill is still alive on paper. When the Senate failed to invoke cloture on 15 September, 49 votes to 50, Senator Thom Tillis moved to reconsider, which lets leadership call the vote again. The bill needs 60, so eleven more senators. Five days before the 3 November midterms, the industry is working two routes at once: elect a friendlier Senate, or get the agencies to write the rules without one.

Route one: the election

Crypto-linked groups have spent about $176m across more than 100 races, a figure Reuters built from campaign filings and crypto.news took apart on 28 October. The headline number overstates the money. Fairshake moved $139m into its affiliates first, so adding up each committee's payments counts part of it twice.

Ohio is the biggest single target. By mid-October Defend American Jobs had reported $46.67m backing Jon Husted or opposing Sherrod Brown, and Digital Freedom Fund another $5.94m. One Senate seat took $52.61m, close to a third of the total.

Republicans cannot pass it alone. They hold 53 seats, and even all 53 would leave the bill seven short of 60. The House passed it on 17 July 2025 by 294 to 134, with Democrats among the yes votes. In the Senate, The Defiant counted no Democrat voting to proceed. Whoever wins in Ohio, the bill still needs Democratic senators in this Congress or the next.

Route two: the agencies

“At Treasury, we have a lot of convening powers”

— Scott Bessent, US Treasury Secretary, at Ripple's Swell conference, 27 October 2026, as quoted by Bitcoin Magazine, https://bitcoinmagazine.com/news/treasury-says-win-in-the-digital-asset

Bessent called the stalled bill a disappointment and said Treasury would bring the SEC and the CFTC together to close the gaps through regulation. He named no working group and no timeline. In August, CFTC chairman Michael Selig said his agency would write crypto rules if the bill died, and that is now the plan the Treasury backs. A later commission can rewrite an agency rule; only Congress can repeal a statute.

The calendar

The 119th Congress ends at noon on 3 January 2027. That leaves 61 days after the election, with Thanksgiving and Christmas inside them. If the Senate does not reconsider and pass the bill in that window, H.R. 3633 dies with this Congress, and the next one starts again from a House vote. The fights that stalled it come back too: officials' crypto holdings, which already cost the bill 870 judges in an ethics trade, stablecoin rewards and protection for developers of decentralised software.

Watch Ohio on Tuesday night and the Senate floor schedule the week after. A cloture vote set before Thanksgiving would mean leadership has counted to 60; no vote through December would mean it has not.

Nothing here should be taken as financial advice, only information to consider. Vote counts come from the Senate and House roll calls, spending figures from Reuters as analysed by crypto.news, and Bessent's remarks from Bitcoin Magazine.