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| Via Card-Cow Vintage Postcards. |
Very peculiar impression from this New York Times column by Ezra Klein, "The Way the Senate Melted Down Over Crypto Is Very Revealing". I find it pretty informative, but I'm not sure what part of it is supposed to be the big reveal: the way the Senate melted down reveals mainly that
As I’ve said before: The Senate is a ridiculous institution, run by ridiculous rules.
Namely, the "meltdown" was over a provision the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill or BIB allowing the Treasury Department to force the "brokers" of cryptocurrency transactions to pay taxes owing on the transactions, written by (GOP) Senator Portman and backed by the White House, and predictably there was an outctry of pain among those senators who can't stand that an unenforced tax law should ever be enforced. In fact there was some good faith in the objections, notably over the way Portman's language didn't say very clearly what a "broker" is in this context, and a compromise amendment was duly worked out, involving pro-crypto liberal Ron Wyden, which might well have made the taxes in question a little easier to evade. But the Senate couldn't vote on this amendment Wednesday night, for reasons that had nothing to do with cryptocurrency at all:
