Bo Hines

is this your first bill that you've gotten done as a senator it is um i've served in the senate for over four years but we were in the minority for the past four years so this is the first opportunity since the senate was taken by the republicans to actually drive legislation through and the fact that we had the house representatives of the senate and the white house made this possible it was just a threshold concern we worked so hard as you know to retake the senate in 2024 to retake the white house in 2024 and hold on to the house representatives it worked

And that's the only thing that's enabled us to deliver this type of meaningful legislation.

And I say this too, it's been a great team that has done this.

I may be the author of the legislation, but the leadership that you've brought to bear from the White House, coming in and donating your time from the private sector, working as a volunteer here,

but making certain that the leadership and the vision is present here in the executive branch, you've been absolutely great.

And that vision, I think, is carried forward into the Senate, the House.

More and more people are understanding this and catching on.

And I think what we've done today is launch the catalyst for what's going to make America the crypto capital of the world.

Well, I think the Founding Fathers made it actually quite difficult to legislate for a reason.

But it is difficult.

It's taken months upon months to get to this point.

And the legislation, the Genius Act has been killed a couple of times in the media.

Elizabeth Warren declared victory early on that she killed the bill.

That didn't happen.

She didn't have the juice to do it.

But there have been many, many attempts.

There's a fundamental reason for this, David, because Elizabeth Warren and her crowd want to see a central bank digital currency.

What they want is control of our transactions.

They want the ability.

They're the ones that wanted to get to a $600 threshold for your Venmo transactions, reporting everything.

They want the ability to do choke point 3.0.

And if you think about it, they had visibility in our transactions, the ability to centralize and control them.

They could control our lives.

It may be okay for the Chinese Communist Party, but that's not going to work here in America.

And this legislation put the final nail in the coffin to that.

It's really amazing that you got it through.

We didn't have all the Republicans.

We lost two Republicans.

But...

What enabled me to get the other nine Democrats to come on board was really an education process.

Because at its core, this shouldn't be a partisan issue.

This is about taking America's payment system into the 21st century.

This is about making our nation more competitive.

This is about expanding demand for the US Treasury securities that we issue.

This is about the dominance of the US dollar.

It's hard not to like it, but I think there's a partisan bent here in Washington that's so strong.

that their objective is just to keep Republicans or Donald Trump or David Sachs from getting a win here.

And through education and through listening, and frankly, I don't think it's my legislative skills.

I think it's the business skills that I brought to the legislative branch.

I think it's through the business skills and the ability to negotiate that we've actually gotten to this point today.

There's a piece of the story missing because I started my career at a place called the Boston Consulting Group.

And they sent me to Tokyo for three years back in the late 80s, early 90s.

That's when I learned the language.

And to go back as U.S.

Ambassador to Japan under President Trump in 2017, the honor of a lifetime.

I can tell you representing the greatest nation in the world, any place in the world is an honor.

But particularly in a region like that, that has so much strategic, you know, so many strategic initiatives that are underway right now.

You think about this.

Japan has more U.S.

military stationed there than any place else in the world.

Japan is one of the toughest environments in the world.

If you think about the neighborhood that they're in, North Korea, Russia, China right at your doorstep.

The time that I spent as ambassador really helped me dig in deeply in terms of the national security issues that our nation confronts and those that our allies confront.

At the same time, we did two trade deals with Japan.

nobody thought it could be done and we were able to navigate that with Jameson Greer working right beside Bob Blytheiser.

I loved working with those guys and we got two great trade deals done.

Jameson is back now as the U.S.

Trade Representative and I'm very optimistic that we're going to see more trade flourish.

President Trump knows how to do this.

I've been with him in the trade negotiations.

He knows exactly how to navigate this and I'm looking forward to great results from our trade negotiations as well.

What's happening right now in the United States Senate, we just put through a rescissions package for a little bit over $9 billion.

That's a small amount.

It's a large amount of money, of course, but it's a small amount relative to the entire budget.

And the Democrats have had, they've just gone apoplectic over this.

Any effort to cut back on spending, somehow they've gotta be against that.

They're only for spending, and we're trying to bring physical sanity back to America.

So the focus is gonna be to continue to find opportunities to basically legislate what has been found in Doge,

the other activities well beyond those every department head every agency is looking for ways to streamline regulations and to cut costs and to operate more efficiently and i've got to believe there are tremendous opportunities there and many billions more dollars that will come out of the budget as a result but we've gone into a fairly partisan mode right now and i think it's going to be tough for the next little while while we're in this sort of partisan uh gap i think what we should be doing is focusing on market structure

for digital assets.

And we're working on that.

I just talked to some of my colleagues in the house today about how we're going to marshal that forward.

I'm going to look forward to your leadership there as well and many people in the industry.

Yeah, they called it regulation by enforcement.

You don't know what the rules are, but they just launched an enforcement proceeding against you.

And President Trump was funny today because he looked at the audience, he said, I guess half of you were being prosecuted here about a year ago by the previous administration.

Things are going to change.

Well, I'm telling you, we're going to continue to work along those lanes.

The big, beautiful bill is doing, it's oriented toward growth stimulation, right?

Everything that we can do to stimulate more capital investment in the United States is embodied in the tax law as part of that bill.

So with the growth coming out of the big, beautiful bill, and if we continue to go through the cuts with rescissions, I'm very optimistic that we're going to get back on the right path.

That's the objective.

That's the goal.

Meanwhile, taking us into the 21st century with our payments, with digital assets, we're going to continue to work along those lanes as well.

And I appreciate your leadership in that regard.

It's been over 10 years to get out of the Senate Bank.

One of my friends wrote me yesterday and he said, I didn't think you could get the 10 commandments passed out of the United States Senate.

And I don't want to take the credit for it because it's been a wonderful team.

As I said, your leadership in the White House and the executive branch, our friends in the House of Representatives, my great staff led by Luke Pettit, done just a terrific job.

And in the Senate, too, we've had great leadership.

Our chairman for the Senate Banking Committee is Tim Scott.

He's been a true proponent of this.

Cynthia Lummis is very focused on digital assets and was very supportive of me as she chairs the Digital Assets Subcommittee of our Banking Committee.

So we've had great support in the Senate, and I think it's going to continue to grow both sides of the aisle.

I think you got 18.

And the great thing about Kristen too, she was a Wall Street lawyer at Davis Polk.

She understands the markets and to have her level of technical expertise was a huge asset.

And she was able to really convey to the Democrat side that we were here trying to get the right thing done for the country.

This was not a partisan effort.

This was something that really is aimed at growth, leadership, technology leadership, and frankly, dollar dominance that we all should be for.