Senate Democrats on Wednesday blocked legislation that would limit the ability of members of Congress to trade stock, dismissing it as an empty G.O.P. effort to appeal to widespread voter distrust of public officials ahead of the November elections without actually addressing it. The Stop Insider Trading Act, which the House passed in July, would bar lawmakers and their spouses and family members from buying individual stocks but allow members of Congress who already own them to keep trading with new notice requirements. It places no restrictions on the president or the vice president.
The measure, which needed 60 votes to pass, was blocked on a party-line vote of 53 to 47, its failure predetermined after Republicans attached sweeping voter ID restrictions opposed by Democrats and some G.O.P. lawmakers that have already been rejected by the Senate six times. But Democrats said they would have opposed the bill even without the voter ID measure, because it fails to do what voters have been clamoring for: impose an outright ban on congressional stock trading.
Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, called it a “toothless” bill that was as “ineffective as a screen door on a submarine.” He noted that it would do nothing to stop President Trump, who he said has made 30,000 stock trades in the past year, from continuing such transactions. The Campaign Legal Center also urged Congress to reject the measure because it “does not actually ban congressional stock trading.”
The bill was brought to the floor as part of a final sprint of legislative moves before the midterm elections by Senate Republicans. In Iowa, an outside group supporting Representative Zach Nunn has spent almost $400,000 on an ad highlighting his support for the bill, exaggerating what it does.
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