A MESSAGE FROM BAYER

Investment in agriculture fuels farmers' ability to grow healthy, abundant food. 

Bayer is working with farmers across the country to advance regenerative agriculture that will help increase their yields. With innovations in plant breeding, soil health, and digital technology, US farmers are set up for success. 

At Bayer, we succeed when farmers succeed. Learn more.

Now for French…

Rep. French Hill is the rare congressman who still gets things done—a trait that has endeared him to the business types who yearn for the days when lawmakers… passed laws. As I was preparing for my interview with the House Financial Services chairman last week, a Republican lobbyist praised Hill for actually acting and legislating like a committee chair. A Democratic lobbyist agreed. “I’m kind of a French Hill fan,” he said. “A skilled legislator and a decent guy.”

Hill, a lifelong Arkansan who served as executive secretary to President George H.W. Bush’s Economic Policy Council, is steeped in Southern gentility, and emanates the sort of country-club conservatism that’s fast disappearing these days. Still, Hill has managed to not only survive, but also thrive in Trump’s Washington. He’s a low-drama yet effective committee chair and a consummate team player—a true asset to Speaker Mike Johnson. All characteristics that keep Hill out of your social media feed.

Even his moments of protest arrive in unusually productive ways. He ignored President Trump’s demand to pass a Senate housing bill, but worked with his Democratic counterpart to pass a version he argues is better. Bipartisan praise is rare in this town, but Hill has positioned himself as a central figure in some of the biggest issues moving through Congress. In addition to the housing bill, which is now stuck in the Senate, he was instrumental in the passage of the Genius Act, a bipartisan crypto bill, and is now throwing his efforts behind advancing the Clarity Act, which would create a regulatory framework for digital currencies but is currently stalled in the Senate.

A MESSAGE FROM BAYER

Innovation is at the heart of modern agriculture. 

Regenerative agriculture is helping farmers produce more high‑quality food for the nation. Not only does this work help safeguard crops and reduce risks to harvests, but it also improves soil health, conserves water, and increases biodiversity.

At Bayer, we succeed when farmers succeed. Learn more.

For the latest installment of our Puck Power Breakfast series, I sat down with Hill to discuss his latest cryptocurrency bill—in particular, how it’s become bogged down over complaints that it doesn’t do enough to circumscribe the Trump family’s own crypto conflicts of interest. (The bill’s Democratic opponents are calling it the “Trump Corruption Bill.”) We also discussed his critical view of Bill Pulte’s ascent to acting director of national intelligence, and his opposition to Trump’s new executive order asking banks to report undocumented clients. The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity, but you can read more of the interview here, or listen to the full interview on The Powers That Be.

Leigh Ann Caldwell: The president recently signed an executive order directing banks to notify the government if they suspect customers are undocumented. Is that something you support?

Rep. French Hill: I don’t know how that’s workable, personally. Identity and things of that nature are frequently done in the states—states issue IDs. The bank is not automatically on the hunt for people who are not in the country legally. You could be here not as a citizen, but on vacation, for graduate school, or on a work visa—you can open a bank account, you can buy an apartment building. So I think it’s a challenging place to put the banks, and it’ll be challenging to implement.

Do you think it just won’t be implemented?

I’ve not studied it to the extent of understanding the statutory authority to direct that, but I’m simply expressing my opinion that I think it would be challenging to implement.

The president has named Bill Pulte, currently chair of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, as interim director of national intelligence. As a member of the Intelligence Committee, do you think he’s qualified?

I am, as a member of both HPSCI and chair of the Financial Services Committee, concerned that Bill Pulte has two jobs. I’d like to see him, if he’s going to remain director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, focused on that. It’s a very important job—overseeing the Federal Home Loan Bank System, which has a lot of issues, and obviously coping with Fannie and Freddie, and seeing if this administration will entertain working with Congress to end the conservatorship over them.

This is very complicated: It requires Congress’s engagement, requires the executive branch to make some very tough decisions. I think that’s his principal mission, and I think trying to do that job and be the interim D.N.I.—I don’t want to say it’s an impossible task—I find that very challenging. I hope President Trump very promptly nominates a person who can lead the O.D.N.I. in the right way. This is no time to have a gap in service at National Intelligence.

There’s a bill coming to the House floor this week that would provide funding for Ukraine. Will you support it? [Ed. note: This interview was conducted before the House voted on the Democrats’ Ukraine discharge petition. Hill was not among the 18 Republicans who voted for it.]

I’ve always supported Ukraine. I’m reading the text of the bill now. I support the Peace Act, which I brought out of my committee almost unanimously on a bipartisan basis—it’s actually a much better bill than this one on the House floor this week. This is a bill by Zach Nunn from Iowa, which sanctions all aspects of the Russian oil and gas industry and gives the president discretion to do that.

I’ve argued consistently since President Trump reentered the White House that Congress, on a bipartisan basis, should sanction Russia with a new set of directives—principally to send a message to the Kremlin that on a strong bipartisan, bicameral basis, we reject Putin and Putin’s illegal invasion into Ukraine. In my judgment, this gives President Trump’s whole negotiating posture a lot more strength and credibility, because it’s my assessment that since Congress has not done anything recently on that, that somehow might give Putin the wrong message.

Even if you’re a significant Ukraine supporter, there are problems in this bill. I haven’t decided how I’m going to vote on it. If I vote yes, it will be to send that message—this is a flawed bill, it’s not going to become law, but I want you to understand that elected representatives are not supportive of Putin and Putin’s destruction of Ukraine. If I do vote yes, you will also see me advocate for a bill that could actually become law and would be a much better approach.

There’s a cryptocurrency component to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act—a provision was added to the Senate bill that would ban the central bank from creating a digital currency. Do you support that, and does it jeopardize the bill?

I do support the government not issuing a central bank digital currency. It’s in the rule of construction in [the Genius Act, another crypto bill], signed into law by President Trump. It’s in the housing bill that Tim Scott passed in the Senate, that we then passed in the House with 396 votes. There will be an effort to add that ban to FISA—this has been driven by a belt-and-suspenders approach by some in Congress to make sure the government doesn’t issue a central bank digital currency, whereby we would all bank at the Fed and it could be a surveillance activity. I do anticipate it potentially being in the bill, but I would remind everybody we’ve already voted for it several times.

One of the biggest sticking points on the Clarity Act, the crypto legislation that’s passed the House and is under consideration in the Senate, seems to be the ethics issue. Some Democrats are calling this the “Trump Corruption Bill”—estimates put the Trump family’s crypto earnings around $1 billion. Do Republicans need to put some guardrails around this?

If you had our bill in place, you would have cleaned up the entire memecoin industry. The assertion is that people are essentially doing pump-and-dump-type schemes with memecoins, and if the House bill had been in place, all of those would have been forced onto an exchange, under listing standards and rules of behavior and fair practice. That would, I think, clean up anybody’s concern about memecoin issuance, trading, and dealing, whether by the president or anybody else. That’s one reason why 78 Democrats joined the Republicans in passing Clarity out of the House.

Secondly, I think members are open to normal Office of Government Ethics or executive- and legislative-branch limitations on their own members. The Senate is working on how they can tighten that language more while maintaining constitutional separation of powers—the rules of the House and Senate differ from the rules for officials in the executive branch. Both can have limitations, but both have to be written in a way that can be enforced in their respective branches.

Do you think Congress is able to write any of those rules around the executive branch?

It gets into a constitutional situation. The president and the vice president are treated differently among other federal officials, too, so you have to deal with that. But in terms of individual elected officials in the legislative branch, and the president, vice president, and executive-branch appointed officials, I think they can find language that works.

You get into the family aspect of it, then you open up a whole can of worms. Every president since George Washington has dealt with family connected to the presidency. Do you think you can write a law that says no member of the president’s family can do this or that commercial activity? I think that’s very difficult. I don’t anticipate that to be the direction the Senate would go.

Need help? Review our FAQ page or contact us for assistance. For brand partnerships, email ads@puck.news.

You received this email because you signed up to receive emails from Puck, or as part of your Puck account associated with {{customer.email}}. To stop receiving this newsletter and/or manage all your email preferences, click here.

Puck is published by Heat Media LLC. 107 Greenwich St., New York, NY 10006