Pat Toomey

Thank you for allowing me to briefly introduce Dr. Amy Gutmann and express my strong support for her nomination to be our next U.S. Ambassador to Germany.

Any regulatory regime that is devised to apply to a particular technology at a particular moment in time is going to be particularly vulnerable to arbitrage by private sector entities.

Imposing regulation for insured depository institutions on stablecoins, which hold 100 percent short-term liquid reserves and are designed for payments, not lending, is the wrong approach.

[c]ommercial entities should be eligible to issue stablecoins, provided they choose one of these regimes.

The SEC (and the CFTC) should continue to oversee the stablecoins under their jurisdiction.

The more specialized the regulator, the more opportunities there are for the industry to 'capture' the regulator.

In my view, a non-interest bearing stablecoin, fully reserved and regulated as many stablecoin issuers are today, as money transmitters, those stablecoins should not be viewed as securities.

Mr. Gensler has, I think, at times indicated that stablecoins, at least some stablecoins, may actually be securities.

Stablecoins can speed up payments, especially cross-border transfers, reduce costs, including remittances, and help combat money laundering and terrorist financing through an immutable and transparent transaction record.

Let us be sure that we do not stifle innovation in an evolving digital economy or undermine our own country's competitiveness.

If Congress banned stablecoins, do you think that maybe people in other countries would develop stablecoins?

Stablecoins are a central component of the cryptocurrency ecosystem, which is itself at the vanguard of the tokenization of assets.

I think it is profoundly in the American national interest and in our public interest that we have options for how people can move money in an always-on economy.

Some of our witnesses today seem to think that stablecoins are unlikely to ever serve any purpose other than facilitating cryptospeculation.

I will continue to work with the financial watchdogs to ensure they have the tools they need to protect people's hard-earned money and our economic recovery from another bubble and another crash.

Allowing Amazon, Alphabet, or Meta/Facebook to issue stablecoins would be a worst-case outcome.

Given that stablecoins disrupt the status quo, they've naturally drawn skepticism from incumbent industries and regulators.

[r]egulation should protect the privacy--and confidentiality of individuals using stablecoins.

These principles recognize that stablecoins are a very important innovation and they introduce new capabilities into money that did not previously exist.

I was encouraged that the report acknowledged that responsibility for clarifying whether, and to what extent, Federal agencies have jurisdictions over stablecoins is a question that rests with Congress.

But instead of being the cop on the beat, the Biden administration seems intent on turning FHFA into a coconspirator with the GSEs.

It is inevitable, in my mind, that some borrowers, once again, will misrepresent their circumstances in order to get, for instance, downpayment assistance.

Will you commit to conduct another evaluation to determine if Ex-Im is, in fact, complying with its updated policies and procedures that are designed to prevent crowding out of private sector capital?

I worry about whether Ex-Im is taking adequate steps to ensure that its financing deals are not subject to some kind of corruption.

I've been warning about the risks of higher and more persistent inflation since January.