House Republican leaders have significantly reduced the legislative calendar, canceling votes for the weeks of September 21 and September 28 and moving the chamber's departure to September 17 from October 1. The House will return September 14 for four voting days before leaving Washington until after the November midterms.
The compressed schedule creates immediate challenges for the CLARITY Act, a crypto market-structure bill that the House approved 294-134 in July 2025. The Senate's first major procedural vote is scheduled for September 15, only two days before the House departs. Galaxy Digital's head of research Alex Thorn said the change makes passage before the midterms "extremely unlikely."
The Senate still has roughly three weeks of session stretching into early October, but any version it passes must ultimately match the legislation approved by the House before it can reach President Donald Trump. The Senate has already begun work on amended language, complicating the process.
Punchbowl News reported that senators could potentially work through the required procedures in about a week and a half if everything proceeded smoothly, depending on amendments. Before the calendar change, the House would have had sufficient time to take up a Senate bill quickly. That late-September window is now closed.
Pressure to advance the legislation has intensified from multiple quarters. Trump called on Congress to pass "a fair version of the Clarity Act," while SEC Chair Paul Atkins has said legislation remains "indispensable." House Financial Services Committee Chairman French Hill has pressed the Senate to act, noting that 78 Democrats joined Republicans when the House approved the bill.
Senator Cynthia Lummis had previously warned that the remaining legislative window was narrowing, calling the coming weeks the "last real chance" for years to complete market-structure legislation.
Despite the compressed timeline, the bill's prospects are not entirely eliminated. Ripple's head of policy Lauren Belive argued that post-election lame-duck sessions have repeatedly produced major negotiated legislation even after elections that changed congressional control. If the Senate produces a sufficiently settled bipartisan bill before Election Day, the House could still take it up in a lame-duck session, though such a path carries different political risks if either or both chambers change hands in November.
Prediction markets have remained skeptical, with Polymarket traders pricing in less than a 20% chance that CLARITY would become law by December 31. For now, the September 15 Senate vote represents the first critical test.
