Senate Votes Down Stock Trading Ban Critics Say Doesn’t Go Far Enough

Legislation aiming to ban members of Congress from insider trading failed to meet the necessary 60-vote threshold Wednesday after Democrats voted against it.

The Stop Insider Trading Act would generally prohibit members of Congress, their spouses and children from purchasing new individual stocks, requires public notice before they sell stocks and bans them from purchasing covered investments, which is a publicly traded company or comparable economic interest. The bill will not reach a final vote after failing to get through the procedural vote.

The bill would allow members of Congress to hold onto their existing holdings and sales of those existing holdings require between seven and 14 days of public notice.

Democrats opposed the insider trading bill, which included provisions from the Safeguard America Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Tuesday that the bill was a “fraud” and that Republicans were only pretending to care about insider trading.

“All of a sudden, the GOP is pretending to care about stock trading,” Schumer said during a press gaggle attended by the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Last July, the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee advanced a strong bipartisan bill to ban congressional stock trading. Republicans abandoned this effort. Now they watered down the ban and created loophole after loophole in this sham legislation. Let’s be clear, this bill does not ban stock trading.”

House Democrats argued the provision was a “poison pill” and that the bill did not go far enough. They argued it did not go far enough because it allowed members to keep shares and did not prohibit the president, vice president or cabinet members from trading.

“It doesn’t actually prohibit members from trading stock,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said. “And of course, it didn’t include the president, the vice president and the cabinet. Which is extraordinary, given that during Donald Trump’s first year as president, he’s traded more stocks than every other member of Congress combined.”

Republican Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley said the House’s version of the bill was “not nearly as robust” as he would have preferred, although hinted at supporting it and adding stronger language.

“If that’s what the House is able to pass, I’m certainly happy to take that and to work with it. As I say, I’d like to see something stronger. I’d like to see tougher penalties. I’d like to see an across the board ban on any kind of stock trading in stock ownership by members of Congress,” Hawley said.