Republican House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-MN) warned against a central bank digital currency (CBDC) Thursday, assailing the technology as an affront to American values of privacy, individual sovereignty, and free markets.

The lawmaker’s comments came during a panel hosted by the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank headquartered in Washington D.C. He described CBDCs as a struggle for power between the American government and its populace. But the Federal Reserve has said it won’t issue a CBDC without written approval from Congress. And the technology could foster greater financial inclusion while lowering costs for consumers, analysts have said.

“As the federal government seeks to maintain and expand the financial control to which it has grown accustomed to, the idea of the central bank digital currency has gained traction within the institutions of power,” Emmer said today. “I’m confident that American values will always prevail against the power-hungry whims of unelected bureaucrats.”

His concerns stem from a belief that a CBDC in the U.S. would erode American’s financial privacy—allowing government agencies to track individual spending—or be used to “choke out politically unpopular activity.”

CBDCs are similar to stablecoins in the sense that they are digital tokens pegged to the price of a sovereign currency like the U.S. dollar. However, instead of being issued by private companies on decentralized networks, CBDCs are issued and maintained by their respective governments or central banks.

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Author: André Beganski

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