Senate Democrats block bill to restrict lawmaker stock trading and impose new voter ID requirements
By Annie Grayer, CNN
(CNN) — Senate Democrats on Wednesday blocked a bill to restrict lawmaker stock trading over objections to new voter ID requirements that Republicans added to the legislation.
The party-line vote was 53 to 47. While the bill adds more constraints on lawmaker stock trading than what exists under the current law, all Democrats opposed it, saying it did not go far enough to outright end the practice. Democrats also disapproved of the Republican decision to attach changes to voter ID requirements to the legislation.
President Donald Trump has long pushed for voter ID — and the vote comes in the run-up to the November elections, where control of Congress is at stake and Republicans are trying to turn out their base in a year that the president is not on the ballot.
Polls have consistently found widespread support for banning members of Congress from trading stocks. The issue has received national attention and alarmed nonpartisan ethics experts about whether lawmakers are using their positions of power for personal enrichment.
The House narrowly passed the bill in July, with only 13 Democrats joining Republicans to support it. The legislation prevents lawmakers, their spouses, and dependent children from buying new stocks of publicly traded companies while serving in Congress, which adds a new restriction on a highly controversial practice. But lawmakers could still buy private stocks, keep stocks they already owned prior to entering Congress and maintain certain investment funds.
Lawmaker stock trading has not been reformed since the STOCK Act was passed in 2012. That bill created requirements for lawmakers to disclose their stock trades but has done little to curb the practice. Under current law, lawmakers, their spouses, and children are permitted to make trades, but they are mandated to report any activity done on their behalf within 45 days. They are only required to disclose a monetary value range for trades.
There is bipartisan support for restricting lawmaker stock trading. But the issue has still splintered along partisan lines. Democrats have argued any effort should ban the president, vice president and their spouses from trading stocks as well, losing Republican support in the process.
Ahead of the vote, Senate Majority Leader John Thune praised the bill as “something that is broadly supported by the American people.”
But Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said it would only create “loophole after loophole,” and objected to the addition of the voter ID requirements.
“The bill Republicans are offering today is Swiss cheese legislating, creating loophole after loophole after loophole, and it’s a step backward to solving this critical problem,” Schumer said Tuesday. “If Republican senators really cared about stopping stock trading by members, they wouldn’t have loaded it up with a poison pill voter ID bill which Senate Democrats have defeated already twice.”
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