What Congress Left Behind in 2024
by Travis Horr, Director of External Affairs
Congress is scheduled to recess for the year this week, punting several important issues to the next Congress. Many legislators will use this time to look back and highlight the things they have accomplished and how they helped their constituents back home. However, it’s important to point out that this Congress has been historically unproductive, passing the fewest amount of bills since the Great Depression. Despite this lack of productivity, there is one niche industry that lawmakers have been laser-focused on.
The 118th Congress came into 2023 with one large agenda item, the Farm Bill. The Farm Bill is a law passed every five years that updates not only agriculture policy, but also important issues like food assistance, conservation programs, commodities markets, and rural development. The last Farm Bill was passed in 2018 and was set to expire in September 2023, until Congress gave it a one-year extension, which it is poised to do again this year. These extensions keep funding at levels similar to 2018, before the pandemic. Despite the urgency facing farmers and the need for action on issues like nutritional assistance, the attention of the Agriculture Committees in the House and Senate was captured by another industry that barely registers for most Americans. The crypto industry.
According to the Federal Reserve only 7% of the US population is currently using crypto, and that number is down from previous years as more and more Americans are rightfully skeptical of the crypto industry. But when looking at Congressional activity you would think that this niche industry is much, much larger. During the last two years, the Agriculture Committees in the House and Senate held four Committee hearings, including an unprecedented joint hearing between the House Agriculture and Financial Services Committees to advance an industry-friendly crypto bill.
While the Committees held almost twice as many hearings directly related to the Farm Bill, almost all those hearings happened in 2023. Even while holding hearings, they were never able to get a bill to the floor in either the House or the Senate. The House Committee proposed and voted on a Farm Bill that would make massive cuts to food assistance, the Senate only recently released their version of the Farm Bill in November. In comparison the crypto industry favored bill, Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act (or FIT 21), received a full vote on the House Floor in May 2024. While the Farm Bill addresses real issues that impact farmers and Main Street, FIT 21 looks to give only an appearance of regulation over an industry that is rife with fraud and has no verifiable use case.
The crypto industry employs less than 200,000 people in the United States and has a total market size of approximately $5.25 billion. In comparison, the agriculture business employs over 2.5 million farmers alone and contributes $1.5 trillion to the United States' GDP. Additionally, food costs are the third-highest expenditure for American families, accounting for almost 13% of consumer spending.
Our Benjamin Schiffrin looks at issues involving gambling, gamification, and AI in Finance in his new Fortune op-ed, which you can find here.
So why is such a small industry dominating the Congressional calendar? The answer, as it usually goes in Washington, is lobbying. While the Agriculture industry is no stranger to lobbying, spending over $181m in 2023 and 2024, the crypto industry has taken a page out of the traditional financial sector’s playbook and spent nearly $200m in campaign contributions over the last election cycle. While the agriculture business is typically split among parties and candidates, the crypto industry acted in lockstep to heavily target specific races that would help move their agenda.
For example, according to Open Secrets, the agriculture business spent $74,000 to Democrats and $104,000 to Republicans running for Senate in ‘23-‘24. In comparison, the crypto industry spent $40 million in Ohio alone to oust Senate Banking Chairman, Sherrod Brown, a known crypto skeptic. They started the election cycle by putting in $10 million in the California Senate Primary to oust a staunch consumer advocate in Katie Porter. This targeted spending is giving the industry an outsized influence in Washington and pushing aside the needs of 2.5 million farmers and 42 million Americans who rely on food assistance.
Trust in the crypto industry is at an all-time low following scandal after scandal. Almost 40% of Americans who have invested in crypto no longer have any because of their distrust of the industry. Despite their campaign spending the crypto industry didn’t even mention crypto in their advertising campaign. Yet Congress continues to devote its limited time and resources to advancing the priorities of this industry over those of farmers, consumers, and most Americans. It is past time for Congress to get to work solving the problems of Main Street Americans, and not monied special interests.