Washington has been talking about a US CBDC as a distant possibility for years. It was an abstract policy idea, safely contained in white papers and partisan messaging. But then the Senate put a number on it and made it very real.
On March 2, senators voted 84-6 to invoke the motion to pass HR 6644, a broad housing and banking package that would bar the Federal Reserve from issuing a CBDC until the end of 2030.
Only six senators voted no. Cory Booker voted present and nine senators did not vote.
That margin meant that a CBDC was no longer a side battle in crypto policy. CBDCs are now at the center of every battle on the Senate floor over privacy, state overreach, and control.
The procedural reservation is still important for the legal reading of the vote. March 2 was not the final passage, and the roll call does not prove that the six holdouts actually support a digital Fed dollar.
However, it shows that a supermajority in the Senate was comfortable advancing a package that included anti-CBDC language.
The six holdouts, and what their votes actually show
The six senators who voted no were Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Mike Lee of Utah, Chris Murphy of Connecticut, Rick Scott of Florida, Tommy Tuberville of Alabama and Chris Van Hollen of Maryland.
They all voted against advancing HR 6644 at that stage, within a package that goes far beyond digital money policy.
- Ron Johnson (R-Wis.). The Wisconsin Republican was first elected in 2010. Johnson’s Senate biography focuses on manufacturing, budget policy and oversight, and he has held senior positions on budget and research committees.
- Mike Lee (R-Utah). The Utah Republican was first elected in 2010. Lee has built much of his public identity around constitutional structure, civil liberties and limits on federal power, making his inclusion in this bloc of six senators especially notable in the battle for state control of money.
- Chris Murphy (D-Conn.).Democrat from Connecticut and one of only two Democrats in the March 2 no-bloc. Murphy is better known nationally for his foreign policy and gun legislation than for crypto or payments debates, leaving room for multiple readings of his vote without a direct office statement.
- Rick Scott (R-Fla.).Republican and former governor of Florida, elected to the Senate in 2018. Scott’s voice stood out because anti-CBDC politics often found a particularly friendly home among Florida Republicans.
- Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.).Alabama Republican elected in 2020. Tuberville still goes by the nickname “Coach Tuberville” from his long football career, and he joined the small group that broke from the larger Senate wave on March 2.
- Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.).Maryland Democrat and the second Democrat in the no block. Van Hollen serves on the Senate Banking Committee, giving his voice extra weight in a package that combines housing, finance and CBDC language.
The size and scope of HR 6644 is why a simple ideological scorecard doesn’t quite fit here.
The anti-CBDC provision is part of the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, and the replacement amendment goes far beyond digital currencies.
The package includes housing supply and affordability measures, disaster recovery grant structures, rural housing data, modernization facilities, and support focused on manufactured housing communities.
In other words, none of these senators voted on a referendum with one question on a Fed digital dollar, but on whether a much larger package should be brought to the floor.
Why the CBDC language is bigger than the roll call
Yet the CBDC language is unusually direct.
The Senate amendment defines a CBDC as a digital asset that is denominated in U.S. dollars, treated as U.S. currency, carried as a direct liability of the Federal Reserve System, and generally available to the general public.
It goes on to say that the Fed Board or any Federal Reserve Bank may not issue or create such currency or a substantially similar digital asset, either directly or indirectly. The provision expires on December 31, 2030.
That sunset date shows that Congress wants to wall off this issue for the rest of this decade, rather than settle the issue of digital dollars forever.
But the Fed’s own stance on CBDC almost makes this entire effort obsolete.
The Federal Reserve has publicly said it has not made a decision on issuing a CBDC. In a 2022 paper, it set strict requirements for any potential CBDC in the US, but noted that it does not allow direct Fed accounts for individuals.
A later research note reiterated that point, saying the central bank does not intend to proceed with a CBDC without clear support from the executive branch and Congress, in the form of a specific enabling law.
So senators are now blocking a form of money that the Fed says it has chosen not to spend and could not spend on its own. This makes the vote an attempt to set the ground rules early, while the idea of CBDCs is still abstract enough to take shape and controversial enough to gain support.
When it comes to the effects this will have on the crypto industry, the interesting part starts here.
Any harder line against a government-backed digital dollar sends attention back to the private sector dollar rails: bank deposits, tokenized deposits, change infrastructure and stablecoins.
CryptoSlate has already followed several parts of that argument.
When the House of Representatives passed its own anti-CBDC bill in 2024, it was an attempt to stop unelected officials from building a digital dollar without explicit permission from Congress. More recently, CryptoSlate’s report on whether stablecoins could become “CBDCs in disguise” pushed the debate a step further, arguing that private digital dollars could include many of the same control levers that people fear in a state-issued version.
Kraken, which gained a direct link to the Federal Reserve’s payment rails, made the same point, but in operational terms: whoever controls access to dollar settlements controls much more than branding.
Access shapes speed, resilience, predictability and competitive advantage. That’s part of the same fight in Washington, just seen from the infrastructure side and not from the Senate.
The same policy logic runs through the slippage of the White House stablecoin timeline and the broader CLARITY Act impasse in the Senate. Washington is trying to decide what kind of digital dollar system it wants, who can operate it and how far federal control should extend into the machinery. The CBDC vote fits neatly within that larger struggle.
Then came the sequel. On March 4, the Senate approved the motion to proceed by a vote of 90-8.
That second vote gave the March 2 result a second anchor, as it showed it wasn’t just a one-day spike built around an 84-6 split. We can now see that the second vote is evidence of real momentum behind a package of anti-CBDC language.
While the six holdouts make this an interesting partisan debate, the bigger story lies with the 84 who helped push anti-CBDC language into the center of Senate politics, and the broader message behind that vote. Washington wants the digital dollar argument curbed before the Fed ever gets close to testing how far it can go.