A wide array of technologies could help the federal government devise a centrally backed digital currency and increase the efficiency and delivery of government services, U.S. Rep. Tom Emmer (R-MN) said last week.
For instance, advanced technologies could assist the U.S. Treasury Department in issuing the remaining stimulus payments that have not yet been distributed, Rep. Emmer said during the virtual hearing held on June 11 by the Financial Services Task Force on Financial Technology.
“I urge them and each agency to consider new technologies that could help the agencies operate more efficiently and more quickly,” said Rep. Emmer, ranking member of the task force, during the hearing entitled, Inclusive Banking During a Pandemic: Using FedAccounts and Digital Tools to Improve Delivery of Stimulus Payments.
The congressman noted that two months ago, he led a letter as co-chair of the Blockchain Caucus urging the Treasury “to take additional steps to leverage all that American ingenuity, entrepreneurship and innovation has to offer.”
Rep. Emmer also said he has heard that the Federal Reserve is researching and developing a centrally backed digital currency, “a process which I emphatically support but unfortunately have not received the level of public consideration and transparency that I think is fundamentally necessary for such a pursuit.”
The U.S. dollar is changing, he added, and Americans deserve a full accounting of the work being done around methods of exchange.
“As the economy moves increasingly online, the use of cash will diminish,” Rep. Emmer said. “To engage in electronic commerce, citizens need an intermediary in most cases, including many cryptocurrencies.”
And to be a truly permissionless digital cash, a digital dollar must have the same attributes as physical cash, he said.
“Anything less would simply create a new intermediary, and it could even be one offered by the government in competition with private financial institutions,” said the congressman.
In considering a U.S. digital currency, Rep. Emmer said federal lawmakers should not emulate systems like China’s new digital yuan, which he called “closed, centralized, surveilled, and permissioned so that access can be denied, and payments blocked, by those in power.”
“As I have said from the beginning, technologies like this can empower individuals and make their government more accountable directly to them,” said Rep. Emmer. “We can’t cede this power to the government at the expense of the individual.”