Senator Cynthia Lummis says her BITCOIN Act legislation will clear US national debt

Senator Cynthia Lummis said on Friday that the BITCOIN Act legislation she introduced last year is the only way to stop the US from collapsing under its $36 trillion debt. She said the country has no time for weak fixes.

Speaking on Capitol Hill, she laid out three outcomes: full-blown default, printing money into hyperinflation, or turning to crypto and tech to claw out of the mess. Her bet is on Bitcoin.

Cynthia explained the stakes without hesitation. She said if the country defaults, everything breaks. “The system is built on trust. If we don’t pay back what we owe, that trust disappears,” she said.

The US dollar would fall apart, credit would vanish, and markets would freeze. “We’d hit something worse than the Great Depression,” said Cynthia.

Cynthia says inflation will crush Americans if printing continues

Cynthia said printing money would destroy the value of the dollar and launch the country into insane inflation. “We’re talking Zimbabwe, Weimar Republic levels,” she said. Rent, gas, and groceries would shoot up while wages stay stuck. “Everything becomes unaffordable. That’s not a future I want Americans to face,” she said. The country would keep functioning, but daily life would collapse for normal people.

She called Bitcoin a deflationary solution that puts pressure on the right side of the economy. “Technology boosts productivity and cuts costs. It gives us room to grow faster than our debt,” she said. Cynthia pointed at AI, robots, and crypto as examples of this change. They’re tools, not trends, she said. “They’re the only real weapons we’ve got.”

Cynthia compared the future of the dollar to the British pound. She said it used to dominate global trade but now ranks fifth. “It didn’t vanish. It just lost power,” she said. The dollar could see the same fate if the US keeps pretending debt can be ignored.

Even if the dollar sticks around, Cynthia warned it’s already broken. “It’s how we price assets. But that yardstick is bending. When that happens, prices rise even if real value doesn’t,” she said. Her advice? “Buy real assets or get left behind.”

White House, Treasury, and Congress locked in debt chaos

The US Treasury, meanwhile, is dealing with a system so broken even their own advisors want to destroy the debt ceiling. Minutes from the Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee, released April 30, said the current setup causes “volatility, higher costs, and threatens the dollar’s global status.”

They want Congress to just hand borrowing power to the White House and be done with it. Debt yields exploded last month after President Donald Trump threw tariffs at a long list of countries on April 2, which forced the Treasury to move fast.

They announced they’ll sell $125 billion in coupon debt next week, including $58 billion in 3-year notes, $42 billion in 10-year notes, and $25 billion in 30-year bonds, just to raise $30.8 billion in new cash.

The Treasury said they’ve been boxed in by the ceiling since February. They’ve had to drain their cash balance just to keep the country solvent. That won’t work for long.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated in March that the US could run out of borrowing options by August. Forecaster Wrightson ICAP said the country might last until the second week of September—if nothing goes wrong.

The TBAC made it clear that trying to stay under the cap is screwing with cash flow and short-term Treasury bills. The limits don’t stop spending. They just smash the government’s ability to move money.

“The debt limit has not successfully promoted fiscal responsibility,” the report said. “But it has damaged the US credit rating and could hit the dollar’s reserve status.”

Republicans in Congress keep using the ceiling as leverage to demand cuts. The last extension died January 1, and since then, the Treasury has been using “extraordinary measures” just to keep paying the bills. It’s not sustainable.

During his Senate confirmation hearing in January, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said repealing the limit wasn’t simple, but if Trump tells him to do it, he will. “The United States is not going to default on its debt if I’m confirmed,” he told lawmakers. But he also said the ceiling works like a car’s handbrake. “You can still hit the brakes without it, but it’s one less feature.”

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