French Hill Says Bitcoin (BTC) CLARITY Act Can Still Pass in 22-Day Lame-Duck Window

Update 02:41 UTC: The specific agency moves Hill is critiquing have also taken on more detail.

Hill Backs Congress Over Agency Rules

House Financial Services Committee Chair French Hill said on Wednesday that the regulatory moves taken by the SEC and the CFTC are not a substitute for legislation, renewing his push to pass the CLARITY Act before the next Congress is seated. In a Fox Business interview, the Arkansas Republican argued that administrative rulemaking lacks the legal permanence the digital asset industry needs, because rules written by agencies can be rewritten or reversed when administrations change. The comment came after the US Senate failed last month to advance the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, the bill widely viewed as the vehicle for a durable market-structure framework for assets such as Bitcoin (BTC). Bitcoin price action has been muted on the news, with traders treating the legislative timeline as the real driver.

Hill's position stands against the path currently being taken by the two regulators. Following the failed Senate vote, SEC Chair Paul Atkins and CFTC Acting Chair Michael Selig, acting at the direction of President Donald Trump, each put forward rulemaking proposals covering spot-market classification, stablecoin compliance and derivatives supervision. Hill said those responses "fall short" of what a legislative fix would deliver. "I still have hope that we can get it passed in the lame duck session of Congress," he said, adding that "we need that permanent law change to make sure America is number one in digital assets and blockchain technology." The bill text as drafted draws jurisdictional lines between the two agencies, placing digital commodity oversight with the CFTC, whose mandate already covers crypto futures markets, while securities enforcement stays with the SEC.

The procedural history behind the stalled Senate vote has also come into sharper focus. Records cited in September show the Sep. 15 motion to open debate on the bill failed 49 to 50, with one senator absent, leaving supporters 11 votes short of the 60 required, and that the setback concerned starting debate rather than final passage. Republican Sen. Thom Tillis switched his vote to no and filed a motion to revisit the result, preserving a route for reconsideration. The House passed its version of H.R. 3633 in July 2025 by 294 to 134, with 78 Democrats in support, meaning any materially changed Senate version would still need agreement between the chambers. Democratic negotiators, including Sen. Angela Alsobrooks, have tied their support to unresolved ethics safeguards covering current and future presidents and members of Congress.

The specific agency moves Hill is critiquing have also taken on more detail. The SEC granted an innovation exemption covering tokenized stock trading that took effect on Sep. 17, and announced an October framework letting certain investment advisers and funds custody crypto under defined conditions, while a March 17 interpretation addressed five asset classes and an August proposal set exemption thresholds at $5 million and $75 million. At the CFTC, Selig has submitted crypto market regulation proposals to the White House and weighed direct oversight of crypto exchanges, saying in August, before the Senate vote, that the agency would pursue a market-structure approach whether or not the bill passed. Hill credited Atkins and Selig for using their exemptive powers to give definition to digital assets, but said the results still fall short of a legislative solution.

Seven Empty Seats at SEC and CFTC

The structural problem Hill faces is time. According to the current calendar, the Senate has only 22 days in session between the November midterm elections and the seating of the new Congress in 2027. Those lame-duck votes will be shaped by the election results themselves, since lawmakers will know by then whether they are returning in January or leaving, a dynamic that can move votes in either direction on the CLARITY Act. Hill noted that Congress has passed major legislation in tight windows before, citing a chip-subsidy and infrastructure funding framework approved in a short end-of-year session in late 2020.

His argument also rests on how thinly staffed both agencies now are. As of Wednesday, the SEC and CFTC combined carry seven vacancies at the leadership level. SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce announced her resignation last week, leaving Chair Atkins and Commissioner Mark Uyeda as the commission's only sitting members. At the CFTC, Selig serves as the sole commissioner. The arithmetic matters for the industry: an SEC rule proposal requires at least three commissioner votes to advance, so with two members the agency cannot formally adopt new crypto rules at all. Selig, meanwhile, must pursue CFTC proposals without any fellow commissioner behind him. Proposals issued under these conditions are not final rules; they remain subject to comment periods, votes and likely court challenges, which is exactly the instability Hill says legislation would remove.

Why the 22-Day Window Matters for Bitcoin

Our reading is that Hill's intervention changes the burden of proof in the debate. As long as both agencies are operating with skeleton leadership, the agency-only route cannot produce binding law regardless of how fast proposals are drafted, and any rule that did advance would carry a judicial-review risk that an Act of Congress does not. For Bitcoin (BTC) specifically, the bill's allocation of digital commodity oversight to the CFTC would settle a classification question that affects everything from exchange listings to ETF structures and custody rules for institutional products. The 22-day session count is the number to watch: if the midterms produce a Senate more inclined to take up the bill, a lame-duck vote is plausible, and a delay pushes the question into a new Congress and at least two more years of rulemaking rather than statutes.