Today, Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA), the top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, delivered the following opening statement during a full Committee hearing entitled, “Navigating the Digital Payments Ecosystem: Examining a Federal Framework for Payment Stablecoins and Consequences of a U.S. Central Bank Digital Currency.”

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

For years, I and my colleagues have sought to craft commonsense crypto legislation with guardrails for consumers, and strong oversight. In less than two months, President Trump and Elon Musk have undermined all of this work. In fact, since taking office, Trump has only enriched himself, his crypto cabinet, and the rest of the crypto billionaire class. And, he has done nothing to improve the economy, let alone anything to bring down the cost of groceries, energy, or housing, as he promised. In fact, egg prices are up 53 percent and just yesterday the S&P 500 fell a blistering 2.7 percent.

Trump started with a memecoin scheme that scammed investors out of $2 billion while Trump, his family, and other insiders pocketed $350 million. And just last week Trump signed an Executive Order to spend U.S. taxpayer resources to create a fund of billions of dollars of crypto that would squarely enrich Trump, Musk, and MAGA cronies already holding these cryptocurrencies.

Mr. Chairman, despite my belief that the Trump Administration only wants crypto legislation that personally benefits them and protects their crypto financiers, I still hope that we can work together on a bill that requires stablecoins be robustly and fairly regulated. Unfortunately, the bill noticed for this hearing strips away critical protections to shield investors from criminals. The bill also tears down the wall that used to separate banking from commerce, allowing big tech firms, including those owned by Elon Musk, to issue their own money, just like Facebook tried to do with Libra. I’m proud of how this Committee stopped Libra and Facebook, and I will do everything I can to stop Musk, also.

It is also clear that given Trump’s and Musk’s actions on crypto and the mass layoffs of the employees who would be charged with overseeing crypto, we must go back to the drawing board on stablecoins. The best starting point for moving forward is the Waters-McHenry bill, which I released a few weeks ago.

Before I close, I am also deeply concerned that we are considering a bill today to strip the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau of supervision of big tech payment apps. This comes after Trump’s appointees halted all Consumer Financial Protection Bureau supervision of big banks. Moreover, the Republican resistance to even allow the Fed to study Central Bank Digital Currencies is not only anti-innovation, but is anti-American as it helps China win the digital currency “space race” and undermines the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency.

Mr. Chairman, I am prepared to work with you and this Committee. And we need to go back again to the drawing board on stablecoins and get started so we can really get into crypto. And I just believe that your leadership will take us there. I just cannot believe that this Committee would follow what Trump is doing for himself and the other billionaire cronies of his.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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