Senate Democrats Kill Stock-Trading Ban Over a Voter-ID Provision

Senate Democrats on Wednesday blocked a House-passed ban on members of Congress trading stocks, in a 53–47 vote that fell short of the 60 votes needed to advance. The vote was on party lines. The measure is the Stop Insider Trading Act.

The House had approved the bill with the support of 13 Democrats. The Wednesday Senate vote effectively ends the bill’s chance of passing before the Nov. 3 midterms, Just the News reported.

Democratic opposition tracked a voter-identification provision Republicans wrote into the legislation. The SAVE America Act, the administration’s main voter-ID and proof-of-citizenship bill, has been stopped in the Senate by the same 60-vote threshold. Republicans have responded by placing voter-ID language in other vehicles. The stock-trading ban was one of them.

The underlying trading restriction had bipartisan support in the House, including those 13 Democratic votes. The Senate vote did not. All 47 votes against cloture came from Democrats, according to the party-line count Just the News reported. Republicans supplied the 53 votes in favor, short of the supermajority the chamber requires to move most legislation.

President Trump has spent the past week arguing that the new America.gov portal removes the claim that proof of citizenship and photo identification are too hard to obtain. The Senate vote is the other half of that fight: a recorded decision to stop a bill that carried a voter-ID requirement, even though the same bill would have limited lawmakers’ stock trades.

Congressional stock trading has been a standing complaint in both parties. Members and spouses have reported trades in companies that appear before their committees. The House bill was written to shut that practice down. The Senate did not take up a clean version. It took up the version that also carried the identification rule, and Democrats voted it down.