If there was one reason Sen. John Thune (R-SD) gave for why he would be the best choice to run the Senate for Republicans, it was that he was going to bring back “regular order,” the way the Senate operated for decades until the obstructionist era, best exemplified by Mitch McConnell, rolled around.

Regular order was once described to me by Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR), who was reminiscing about his time as a summer intern for his home-state senator Mark Hatfield in 1976. His job was to run from the Senate floor, tell his boss what amendments were being offered and what the arguments were, and prepare Hatfield to vote on them. That’s because the Senate floor was a dynamic place where legislating happened. Amendments to bills would get an up-or-down vote, and the finished product would represent the views of all the senators who wanted to shape it.

This was the vision Thune set out to recreate, and he was elected to institute something like it, so that senators would be actual lawmakers again, instead of empty suits brought in to rubber-stamp somebody else’s work.

It all sounded great until one senator tried it. Then, his colleagues came to the realization that they didn’t actually want to be lawmakers if it meant that a source of future campaign donations might get mad at them. Empty suits are much safer and more pleasant.

So Thune went back on the only animating principle he professed to have, and as a result the GENIUS Act, the first in a multi-step return on investment for the crypto industry’s purchase of Congress, is back on track.

As I wrote earlier this week, the GENIUS Act, which sets up a fairly industry-friendly regulatory regime for stablecoins, was poised to sail through the Senate with enthusiastic support from Republicans and pro-crypto Democrats until Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS) tried to get an amendment for his bipartisan Credit Card Competition Act, which would attempt to break the Visa/Mastercard duopoly and lower merchant fees that have been killing retail businesses.

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What senators hated about Marshall’s proposed amendment was that it would force them to choose between the retail lobby on one side and banks, credit card companies, and airlines (which are flying banks with their credit card reward programs) on the other. They would rather not choose and collect checks from everyone.

This was really the first bill where the open amendment process was in place and “regular order” was in effect. Thune quickly realized that senators would rather talk about governing than actually govern. There was a weeklong impasse amid jockeying for which amendments would get what votes. And Thune finally threw up his hands and ended the amendment process altogether.

Senate majority leaders in the past couple decades have “filled the amendment tree,” a procedure by which they insert their own amendments (the “branches” in this analogy) and block the ability for anyone else to do so. In the case of the GENIUS Act, the “amendment” is the substitute version of the bill, which includes some minor changes negotiated by Republicans and Democrats. The “amendment,” in other words, is just the whole bill.

The only constraint on filling the amendment tree is that senators who got their amendments taken away could turn against the bill. But in this case, most senators appear to have wanted Thune to fill the amendment tree. They didn’t want to have to take a tough vote. They’re all too happy to have that taken out of their hands. Marshall is likely to vote for the GENIUS Act anyway. And the other primary set of amendments came from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), who was already a no.

There’s an outside chance that other amendments could get a vote on the bill, but that would require unanimous consent, meaning that any single senator could block the amendment. Voting is teed up for today, and the whole process will be completed by next Monday at the latest.

The truth is that the Senate’s legislative muscle is so atrophied by now that its members are terrified of fulfilling their job descriptions.

This finally memorializes the bargain that some Senate Democrats made last month that made it easier for them to support the GENIUS Act. So Democrats will facilitate tech barons like Elon Musk creating their own private currencies, a race to the bottom framework for smaller stablecoin issuers that will have no federal oversight, and the potential for dangerous linkages between crypto and the broader financial system that could trigger financial crises.

It's unlikely we’ll see a rebellion here. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) has flipped to no and maybe a couple Democrats will join him. But as of the last vote on the motion to proceed, supporters have a nine-vote cushion.

This is just the Senate vote; the House still must pass its own version of stablecoin reform. But whatever differences the two chambers have will be worked out by Republicans; Democrats have effectively forfeited their own role in the debate.

The bigger sacrifice than a bad stablecoin bill is regular order in the Senate. Periodically you hear about the good old days of the world’s greatest deliberative body, and how everyone must figure out how to get back to that. The truth is that the Senate’s legislative muscle is so atrophied by now that its members are terrified of fulfilling their job descriptions. “Taking a tough vote” is kind of a bare minimum requirement for a national politician; ducking them constantly and blaming process instead of personal cowardice is just one of the many ways our political leaders hide from accountability.