The committee is finally working on amendments. An amendment proposed by Senator Mike Rounds to adopt sandboxes for artificial intelligence tools was adopted with a 15-9 vote, meaning it received bipartisan support in the committee despite Warren urging her party to vote no.
Another amendment, this time by Warren, to “keep risky assets out of retirement accounts” was not adopted on partisan lines, in an 11-13 vote.
A third amendment, proposed by Senator Katie Britt of Alabama, would let certain types of retirement accounts invest in collective investment vehicles, but was withdrawn prior to a vote.
The first more contentious amendment might be a Warren proposal to address sanctions authority in the legislation.
“We need to fix the hole in our sanctions authority and crack down on crypto money laundering in 2022 the United States sanctioned a notorious mixer called tornado cash that have been used to launder more than $7 billion for criminals and foreign adversaries, including more than $450 million for a North Korean hacking group,” she said. “These types of crypto services are designed to make it easy to launder a huge pile of money and making it hard for anyone, including our law enforcement officials, to tell where the money came from.”
Lummis argued that the bill does address sanctions authority, while Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana asked why the bill does not address Warren’s concerns.
“It’s the Tornado problem,” Warren said. She argued that the bill as-is does not give the Treasury Department the legal authority to isolate mixers.
Lummis said titles 2 and 3 address illicit finance.
This amendment failed 11-13.