Senate Democrats shut down a Republican bill Wednesday that would have banned members of Congress from trading stocks on insider knowledge, packaging the reform with a nationwide voter ID rule.
Senate Democrats on Wednesday shut down a Republican bill that would have barred members of Congress from trading stocks on insider knowledge, refusing to take up a package that paired the reform with a nationwide voter ID requirement.
The move denies Republicans a pair of wins that polling shows Americans want badly, and it hands the GOP a sharp closing argument before November: that Democrats would rather shield their own trading privileges than pass a reform they claim to support.
The Stop Insider Trading Act had already cleared the House, where a majority of House Democrats voted against it. In the Senate it never got off the ground.
The proposal was straightforward on paper. Lawmakers would be prohibited from buying and selling individual stocks using information they gain through their official duties. The idea has polled near the top of voter priorities for years.
A University of Maryland survey found 86 percent of Americans across the political spectrum backed banning lawmakers from trading stocks. A separate Pew Research Center poll found 83 percent of voters favored requiring government-issued photo identification at the ballot box.
Lawmakers already operate under a 2012 disclosure law, but the reports are filed after trades close and depend on members policing themselves. That gap is why a trading ban keeps returning to the floor, cycle after cycle, drawing support from voters who see a Congress playing by different rules than the people it represents.
Republicans tried to deliver both in a single package. The House approved the Stop Insider Trading Act earlier this month over the objections of a majority of House Democrats. Senate Democrats then blocked it outright.
Supporters argue the pairing was honest legislating. Voter ID and a congressional stock ban are two of the few issues that draw broad, bipartisan public support, and Republicans say they were simply giving Democrats a chance to vote yes.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer argued the bill was never meant to become law. He said Republicans loaded it with a provision they knew Democrats would reject, then blamed Democrats for the outcome.
"They don't want this bill to become law," Schumer said. "So they put a poison pill in that they knew would tank it."
He called the maneuver "trickery" and "skullduggery," and said Republicans who genuinely wanted to stop stock trading by members would have brought a clean bill to the floor.
Democrats raised two objections. They said the stock trading language was too weak to matter, and that the voter ID requirement was too aggressive, pointing to its earlier defeats in the Senate. Republicans counter that the SAVE America Act and similar voter ID proposals have been blocked repeatedly, and that Democrats have had every chance to negotiate a stronger trading ban.
The timing is no accident. Both parties are courting the same working- and middle-class voters with less than six weeks until the midterms, and the affordability message has become central to the closing stretch of the campaign.
The stock ban was pushed by Sen. Pete Ricketts of Nebraska, who is locked in a tightening reelection fight. Senate Majority Leader John Thune framed the vote as a simple test of whether Democrats would take yes for an answer.
"Both pieces of legislation strike at the very heart of issues that the American people care deeply about, passionately about," Thune said. "And we'll see if the Democrats are willing to take yes for an answer."
The second bill in the Republicans' Wednesday push would set standards requiring artificial intelligence companies and data centers to absorb the electricity costs they create, a live issue in battleground states where power bills have climbed. That measure was championed by Sen. Jon Husted of Ohio, another incumbent in a competitive race.
Republicans say they will keep forcing recorded votes on the issues they believe move voters, betting that a string of Democratic no-votes becomes its own campaign ad. Thune has signaled the Senate will keep testing the other party on affordability, energy costs, and election integrity.
Democrats, for their part, are betting that the voter ID language, not the stock ban, is what voters remember, and that the pairing exposes Republicans as more interested in messaging than in results.
Republican leaders have not ruled out splitting the two ideas into separate votes, which would force a harder choice. A clean stock trading bill would put opponents in the position of explaining a no-vote to constituents who overwhelmingly back the idea.
The practical question is whether either party will move a standalone bill that could actually reach the president's desk. A clean congressional stock ban would sail through both chambers on the numbers. Whether it gets that vote before November is now the real test of who wanted the reform and who only wanted the fight.
Senate Democrats shut down a Republican bill Wednesday that would have banned members of Congress from trading stocks on insider knowledge, packaging the reform with a nationwide voter ID rule.
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