Senate Agriculture panel delays market structure hearing to Thursday after winter storm

The Senate Agriculture Committee postponed the markup hearing for its crypto market structure bill, previously planned for Tuesday afternoon, by two days.

The committee intended to let lawmakers debate amendments and vote on its version of the bill, which aims to define how the Commodity Futures Trading Commission can oversee crypto markets, but a once-in-a-decade winter storm struck the East Coast and much of the eastern half of the country over the weekend, canceling flights and changing the Senate’s schedule.

The Senate had preemptively canceled votes planned for Monday afternoon on a funding package for the overall government. The U.S. government runs out of funding on Friday night, and the House of Representatives passed its funding package on Thursday.

The Senate needs to vote to advance its funding bills; these votes were pushed to Tuesday afternoon, giving lawmakers a chance to fly back to Washington, D.C. after they were out of session last week.

On Monday, the Agriculture Committee said it would hold its hearing on Thursday at 10:30 a.m. ET instead, citing the “winter weather.”

The hearing is expected to prove contentious; while the Agriculture Committee was seen as likely to have a more bipartisan draft, committee Chair John Boozman said in a statement last week that he and his negotiation counterpart, Democratic Senator Cory Booker, were not able to come to an agreement on the text due to “fundamental differences in policy.”

Democrats unveiled a number of proposed amendments on Friday, pointing to where these disagreements lay. They included provisions forcing ethics commitments onto senior government officials and strong language forcing regulatory agencies to be helmed by bipartisan commissions.