House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, R-MN, introduced legislation Wednesday to stop the Federal Reserve issuing a central bank electronic currency (CBDC). He and others fear that this could monitor Americans’ financial activities.

Emmer, a strong advocate for cryptocurrency, wrote, “Today, we introduced the CBDC Anti-Surveillance State Act” to stop Washington, DC’s efforts to strip Americans of their financial privacy.

He said, “Any digital dollar version must uphold American values of privacy and individual sovereignty as well as free market competition.” Any less will open the door for the creation of dangerous surveillance tools.

Emmer stated that the bill would prohibit the Federal Reserve’s issuing of a CBDC, stop the Fed from using CBDCs for monetary policy purposes, as well as require transparency in the Fed’s CBDC projects.

CBDCs can be described as digital versions of national fiat currencies, which operate on private blockchains.

He stated, “Afterall, America is a technological leader because we force innovations into adopting our values under regulatory duress but because technology that supports these values flourishes.”

Emmer stated that Reps. French Hill, Warren Davidson (R–OH), Andy Biggs(R–AZ), Mike Floods (R–NE), Byron Donaldss (R–FL), Pete Sessionss (R–TX), Barry Loudermilks (R–GA), Young Kims (R–CA) and Ralph Norman (R–SC) were co-sponsors of the bill.

Fed stated that it is investigating the potential benefits and dangers of CBDCs from “a variety of angles”, which includes experimentation and research.

Many countries, including China, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States, are looking into how they can use a CBDC. Since 2021, Nigeria has used a digital version its currency.

House and Senate Republicans urged the U.S. Olympic Committee not to allow athletes to use the digital yuan at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. They cited that increased surveillance by the Chinese CBDC would result in American athletes using more digital yuan.

Senator Marsha Blackburn (Republican from Tennessee) stated that she sponsored the Say No to the Silk Road Act at a Club for Growth technology symposium. This would establish new standards and guidelines for the Chinese digital currency or the Digital Yuan.

Numerous Biden nominees as well as Democrat legislators have pushed for the establishment of an American CBDC.

Biden’s unsuccessful nominee for the Comptroller for the Currency was Saule Omarova. She advocated the creation of a CBDC that would give the federal government enormous control over American money.

Breitbart News was informed by a former top government official that in November 2021 they wanted to “And, why would they do that?” They want to eventually be able approve or deny transactions. That’s the end goal.

Edward Snowden, whistleblower at the National Security Agency (NSA), warned that CBDCs could destroy the “savings of all wage-workers in the country.”

Snowden stated that the CBDC was also “expressly designed” to deny its users basic ownership of their money, and to place the State at the center of any transaction.

Omarova even suggested that the rise in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency was to be blamed for digitizing finance and taking control of the American people’s money.

In “Technology v. Technology – Fintech as a Regulatory Problem”, she wrote that the “root problem” in “massive digitalization of finance” is the “critical shift of power in financial system away from government.

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D.MA), who is highly critical about the cryptocurrency industry, called for the creation of a CBDC by the government in April 2022.