Tom Emmer, a Minnesota representative in the US House of Representatives, has proposed legislation that, if passed, would prevent the Federal Reserve from launching a central bank digital currency, also known as a CBDC.

In a February 22 statement, Rep. Emmer said he had sponsored the “State Anti-CBDC Surveillance Act” in what appeared to be an attempt to preserve the right to financial privacy of the people of the United States. The Minnesota lawmaker claims the move has the potential to prevent the Fed from issuing a digital dollar “directly to anyone,” prevent the central bank from basing monetary policy on a CBDC, and require transparency for initiatives related to digital dollars. .

According to Emmer, “Any digital version of the currency must uphold our American principles of privacy, individual sovereignty, and free-market competitiveness.” (Any digital version of the dollar must defend our American values.) “If we settle for anything less than this, we are inviting the creation of a harmful monitoring tool.”

The law was praised by a significant number of people on social media for being a step in the right direction. Dan Held, a Bitcoiner, praised Emmer’s efforts, while other supporters of the law cited protecting his financial privacy as one of the reasons they backed the proposal.

In January 2022, during the last session of Congress in which Republicans held a minority position in the House, Emmer introduced a measure with nearly identical language. The US lawmaker cited “China’s digital authoritarianism” as the reason for limiting the Fed’s authority on a digital dollar at the time. At the time, China had announced that its digital yuan would be available to foreign athletes competing in the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, and the country is continuing to move forward with the project.

Representative Emmer has been considered a crypto-friendly legislator for a significant portion of his recent tenure, during which he has called on the government to remove regulation to spur innovation within the sector. In December, he sent a request to the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Gary Gensler, asking him to testify before Congress to “address questions about the consequences of his regulatory failures.”