THE RESERVE BILL HAS ONE DEMOCRAT AND HAS NOT GAINED ONE SINCE JUNE 29 — THEN THE SUBSTITUTE CUT THE TRANSPARENCY ANYWAY

H.R. 8957 has twenty-three cosponsors. Twenty-two are Republicans. The one Democrat is Jared Golden of Maine, and he signed on May 21, the day it was introduced. Nobody has joined since June 29.

That is eleven weeks of no new support on a bill whose whole problem is support.

The Financial Services Committee took it up on September 16, and getting it out of that room was never the question. Republicans hold the committee, the only amendment anyone filed to the bill was Bryan Steil's substitute from the chairman's side, and no Democrat filed a thing. That is not a fight, it is a formality.

The hard room is the Senate, and the Senate is where the CLARITY Act died on September 15. Roll call 234, forty-nine to fifty, three fifths required. Every one of the forty-nine yes votes was Republican. Not one Democrat and not one independent voted for it, and four Republicans voted against. The sponsors had taken a hundred and twenty-six Democratic changes and rewritten the ethics title first. The return was zero.

Which makes what the substitute did strange. It cut four reports a year to one, struck the public cryptographic attestation, and deleted the line requiring the reports be posted on a Treasury website. Public reporting is the currency you spend to buy votes you do not have. It was spent in the one room that was never going to stop this bill.