Congress blocks Fed from issuing digital currency, preserving bank gatekeepers
S. 1124 — Anti-CBDC Surveillance State Act · Filed by Ted Cruz (R-TX) · 8 cosponsors · Introduced Mar 25, 2025 · Referred to committee
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What it does
This bill prohibits the Federal Reserve from issuing a central bank digital currency (CBDC) directly or indirectly to individuals, from maintaining individual accounts, and from using any digital asset substantially similar to a CBDC for monetary policy. It also expresses Congress's view that the Fed lacks authority to create a CBDC without explicit congressional approval.
Why we flagged it
The bill's core mechanism is a direct statutory prohibition on Federal Reserve digital currency issuance and testing, framed explicitly as a surveillance-prevention measure. The operative text is straightforward: the Fed is barred from certain activities, not empowered to do anything new.
What the text implies
- Prohibition on Fed testing or studying CBDCs may prevent the U.S. from developing technical expertise in digital currency design, potentially ceding innovation leadership to other central banks and private cryptocurrency platforms.
- The bill's broad definition of 'substantially similar' digital assets may inadvertently restrict the Fed's ability to modernize payment infrastructure or participate in cross-border digital settlement systems that do not meet the CBDC definition but serve similar functions.
- By foreclosing direct Fed-to-individual accounts, the bill may entrench the role of commercial banks as mandatory intermediaries, preserving their deposit-taking monopoly and associated fees even if a direct Fed account would reduce costs for consumers.
- The 'sense of Congress' provision (Section 5) does not change law but signals that future CBDC authorization would require explicit statutory language, raising the political bar for any future digital currency initiative regardless of its design or privacy safeguards.
Section numbers refer to the bill text the analysis read — linked under Primary records below.
Who it affects
The bill protects citizens from potential surveillance and financial control risks associated with a government-issued digital currency, but it also forecloses a potentially beneficial financial innovation that could reduce banking costs and improve payment access for unbanked populations. The balance between privacy protection and financial inclusion is genuinely contested.
Who stands to gain
- commercial banks (preserved deposit-taking monopoly and intermediary role)
- insurance companies (regulatory exposure mapped; potential beneficiaries if CBDC would have disrupte
Named in the bill
Federal Reserve System, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, Federal Open Market Committee, Federal Reserve Act, AIG, FBK, FMAO, PRU, PFG
Where it stands
8 cosponsors: 8 Republicans.
- Mar 25, 2025 — Introduced · Congress.gov: “Introduced in Senate”
- Mar 25, 2025 — Referred to Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs · Congress.gov: “Read twice and referred to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs”
Dates and quoted wording are Congress.gov's action record; the timeline shows status changes, not every procedural step.
Money around this bill
3 lobbying clients named this bill on 4 disclosure filings across 2 quarters, Dec 2025 to Jun 2026. Those filings disclosed $5,250,000 in lobbying spend. A filing names 29 bills on average, so that figure is what each filing reported, not a share belonging to this bill.
More lobbying clients named this bill than 61% of bills with at least one filing.
Ted Cruz, the sponsor, reported $531,115 in PAC receipts in the 2026 cycle.
- American Bankers Association — $5,210,000 on 2 filings
- Federal Hall Policy Advisors, LLC on Behalf of Solana Policy Institute — $20,000 on 1 filing
- Solana Policy Institute — $20,000 on 1 filing
Lobbying Disclosure Act filings through Jul 20, 2026. A filing shows who paid to lobby on a bill it names, not what changed.
How this was measured
Analysis — Quorum's AI read the bill text published by Congress.gov (2,827 characters) on Aug 18, 2026. Section numbers in the findings refer to that text, linked below; transparency and hidden-provision scores are compared against the median of 16,222 analysed bills.
Status and sponsors — Congress.gov's bill record — actions, committee referrals and cosponsors — loaded nightly. The timeline shows status changes, not every procedural action.
Money — Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act filings whose specific-issue field names this bill for quarters ending Dec 2025 to Jun 2026. A filing's amount is reported whole beside the median number of bills a filing names; it is never divided across them. PAC receipts are FEC-reported contributions to the sponsor's candidate committee in the 2026 cycle.
As of — lobbying records through Jul 20, 2026 · page rendered 2026-10-20.
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