The CLARITY Act passage is “When, not if”

A comparison on the telecommunications scale

Patrick McHenry, the former chairman of the House Financial Services Committee who helped push the CLARITY Act through the House in 2025, told Bloomberg in an interview that passing the bill was “a question of when, not if.” It was the most confident public statement yet from one of the bill’s key architects, coming as the Senate’s timetable for passing the bill has repeatedly slipped.

McHenry made a similar argument in a July 16 opinion piece for Fortune, in which he argued that the CLARITY Act represents a regulatory overhaul comparable to the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the law that set the ground rules for the Internet era. He expressed his opinion:

“The CLARITY Act framework can ensure that entrepreneurs feel confident creating jobs and starting businesses without fear of arbitrary or unexplained enforcement actions.

His argument centers on competitiveness, and McHenry believes that Congress now finds itself at a crossroads where the United States can either remain the world’s technology and financial capital by writing clear rules for digital assets, or cede ground to jurisdictions that are already moving more quickly.

Where is the Senate now?

McHenry’s optimism collides with a more complicated reality on Capitol Hill. The Senate Banking Committee advanced the CLARITY Digital Asset Market Act by a bipartisan vote of 15-9 on May 14, with Democratic Senators Ruben Gallego and Angela Alsobrooks joining Republicans in support of it. Since then, the bill has been blocked several times due to unresolved disputes, including the government’s ethics provisions limiting crypto holdings of civil servants and how stablecoin yield should be treated under the new framework.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune said this week that the bill may not be introduced before Congress’s August recess, although he told reporters he would still like to “at least get some clarity started” before lawmakers leave town.

Popular pressure kept pace with the delays as advocacy group Stand With Crypto recorded 950,000 contacts with lawmakers pushing for a vote, with Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong saying the bill was ready for the full Senate.

This is not the first “inevitable” prediction

McHenry isn’t the only prominent voice betting on eventual passage, given that less than 72 hours ago Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent described the bill’s progress as being on the “one-yard line.” Similarly, crypto policy analyst Sandra Ro told media in April that the bill could pass by July “if we’re lucky,” a deadline that is now coming to an end.

That said, the most obvious and practical test of McHenry’s “when, not if” posture will now be whether Thune finds speaking time before the recess or pushes the bill back to September, when the Senate returns for a three-week session. Regardless, McHenry’s comparison to the Telecommunications Act sets the bar high: The 1996 law took years to negotiate but reshaped an entire industry once passed.