The CLARITY bill is now 11 votes short of the Senate's support, with four out of 49 supporters calling for it to be changed.

Four Republican senators who voted to pass the CLARITY Act on September 15 were also included in a joint list of amendments backed by the banking industry that called for stricter limits on stablecoin earnings.

According to Punchbowl News on September 21, John Cornyn, John Curtis, Cindy Hyde-Smith and Lisa Murkowski all voted in favor of the procedural motion but it ultimately failed by a vote of 49-50. The four also signed Sen. Jerry Moran's amendment stablecoin , which the banking industry sees as an addition to existing provisions of the bill.

The math behind the 11-vote gap in the CLARITY bill

The final debate on September 15 needed 60 votes to pass and ended up with 49 votes, another senator abstained from the vote and supporters were still 11 votes short. If any of these four senators lost, the gap would widen even further.

Assuming that all four votes turn against in a future vote, the "yes" will be reduced to 45 and the gap widened to 15. Of course this is only an arithmetic-based hypothetical scenario because signing amendments simply documents one's policy position.

Moran and Susan Collins were also on the amendment list, but both of them had already voted against it on September 15, so their positions did not constitute a new vote count risk. Josh Hawley voted in opposition on September 15 and joined as co-sponsor the next day.

Of particular interest are the four senators who both voted in favor of opening a debate on CLARITY, and individually called for stricter wording on how stablecoin issuers would issue bonuses to customers.

Moran's amendment ((SA 6771)) addresses the current standard for defining a violation stablecoin reward in the act, namely that bribery is economically or functionally equivalent to paying interest on bonds. The amendment replaces it with broader language covering any substantial similarity between bribe and the manner in which depository institutions pay interest or earnings, and completely removes the word "solely" from one of its clauses. In addition, a sub-clause allowing issuers to calculate certain rewards based on account balances, tenure or customer maturities will be removed altogether.

The concern of the banking industry is that stablecoin rewards issued through exchanges, affiliates or loyalty programs may be economically equivalent to interest on deposits in a broader definition. Community banks fear such products will diversify their deposits.

Banking community says current safeguards are too slow to respond

The current draft of CLARITY addresses this issue through a similar regulatory monopoly mechanism: if the Treasury Department finds that community banks are being harmed within 18 months after the law takes effect, the regulator can intervene.

Banking organizations such as the Association of Bankers (ABA) have publicly rejected this proposal, arguing that it would make restrictive measures pointless to confirm damages until deposits had already flowed out of community banks.

Notably, this disagreement is entirely separate from the moral controversy surrounding CLARITY, which has dominated much of public discussion. Democrats have been pushing for stricter provisions to restrict economic interests in the cryptocurrency area by civil servants throughout negotiations. The September 14 draft included amendments that include a new law enforcement role for state attorneys general but no Democratic senators voted for it on the following day's vote.

The pro-banking Republicans on stablecoin and the Democrats on morality are two separate, parallel negotiations that happen to take place over the same bill.

Senator Thom Tillis changed the vote to no immediately after it was revealed and moved a reconsideration motion. This procedural action keeps CLARITY eligible for another vote without having to restart the legislative process from scratch.

Banking organizations continued to publicly call for the adoption of amendments after the vote, and future draft texts will make it clear whether this demand was written into them. The Senate is scheduled to remain in session until early October before its pre-election recess but has not yet set a new voting date within that time window.

The stability of the coalition is key

The optimistic scenario is that Cornyn, Curtis, Hyde-Smith and Murkowski all four maintain a vote in favor of any future closing debate votes even if their requested amendments are not fully implemented; the negotiators also seek support from at least 11 senators who voted against or were absent in September.

In this path, the amendment is just a documented disagreement that doesn't really lose votes and the remaining battleground remains on moral terms and Democratic support.

The pessimistic scenario is that pro-bank Republican senators, who see the amendment as a genuine prerequisite and refuse to support it in future votes until clause stablecoin has been amended at their request. In this case, any one of four defeats would make the gap far greater than 11 votes, forcing negotiators to settle two separate games before CLARITY reaches 60 votes.

CLARITY's public calculations have always revolved around how many votes it has left, and the Moran amendment just so happens to show that it already holds some of them with a few untested conditions added.