00:00Thank you, ma'am. The gentleman from Connecticut is recognized.
00:02Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and I thank the gentle lady from California for this opportunity to speak,
00:07because this is one of the most ignorant things I have seen this House produce in a very, very long time.
00:14And it stuns me, frankly, that my good friends, Congressman Hill and Stile and Barr,
00:19are associating themselves with this bill.
00:23Let's be super clear about this.
00:25Nobody knows whether a CBDC is a good idea.
00:28A couple years ago, I wrote a white paper on CBDC, and I concluded that it's not clear.
00:34And the arguments for and against are being mooted today.
00:37Yes, it could be abused by an overwhelming executive.
00:40If we had a president that, for example, showed disdain for the Constitution,
00:44that was comfortable acting illegally, that wasn't comfortable with judicial rulings,
00:48it's hard for us to imagine that, president, but this could be abused.
00:52It could be used for monetary policy. Bad idea.
00:55It could be used for taxation. Bad idea.
00:57Bad idea. It could also, by the way, be a trusted electronic currency for an unbanked population.
01:04It could be a way of supporting the primacy of the American dollar.
01:08I don't know.
01:09And the truth is that nobody on that side of the aisle or this side of the aisle knows either.
01:14But we're going to forbid any inquiry around this to figure out whether it's a good idea or a bad idea.
01:22We're going to say you can't even research it.
01:26Stunning definition of ignorance.
01:30Imagine if we had said electricity is scary a hundred years ago.
01:35It can kill you.
01:37It's produced by burning coal, which is dangerous.
01:41So we're going to not research electricity or atomic power or the automobile.
01:47Tens of thousands of Americans die every year because of the automobile.
01:49We don't know.
01:51And the majority says, let's not learn because they have some ideological fixation that, frankly, I don't understand.
02:00Two hundred years ago, the private sector, which my friends on the other side of the aisle hold up, had issued currency.
02:08It was called scrip.
02:09Companies and banks issued their own currency.
02:11And this country learned that that was a terrible idea and that, in fact, the central bank should issue currency, which is one of the reasons we are who we are today.
02:20So you might give the CBD at least some benefit of the doubt instead of being ignorant about whether we want to know the truth.
02:31We need to stop this.
02:32We held this institution up for two days over a bizarre MAGA obsession, which is rooted in insanity and ignorance.
02:43Don't even find out the answer.
02:45The ranking member said that this is, you know, like a boy who is hiding from the truth.
02:53I have another metaphor.
02:54This is like a young five-year-old who's angry and covers his eyes and ears and believes he's invisible.
02:58Well, imagine just my good friend Andy Barr saying, we're not like China.
03:06We're not like China.
03:06What if there's a sterling urge to do?
03:08The gentleman's time has expired.
03:09I yield to the gentleman an additional minute.
03:11I thank the ranking member.
03:13The gentleman is recognized.
03:15For all the rah-rah patriotism, think about this.
03:18And again, I'll acknowledge that we don't know if this is a good idea or a bad idea, and we ought to find out.
03:22But let's imagine that the European Union, which Mr. Barr wants to dissociate himself with, puts out a CBD that picks up real usage.
03:32Now, all of a sudden, we have a threat to the dollar because we're still handing around pieces of paper
03:37because the Republican majority said we shouldn't even research something that may or may not be a good part of a modern 21st century economy.
03:51Come on, guys.
03:53Don't go with ignorance.
03:54You're too smart for that.
03:56Don't risk putting us behind on something that could be really important to the future of the American dollar.
