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Editor, Times-Union:
Why did 198 Democrats vote against H.R. 7008, the Stop Insider Trading Act? The answer is more complicated than simply “Democrats opposed banning congressional stock trading.”
The biggest reason: It wasn’t just a stock-trading bill.
The House combined the congressional stock restrictions with a voter-ID provision. Democrats argued this was deliberately designed to make it impossible to support the stock provisions without also accepting a restrictive federal voter-ID requirement.
The final House vote was 232–198:
• Republicans: 218–0 for the bill
• Democrats: 13–198
• Independent: 1–0
• The 13 Democrats who voted yes included Cuellar, Gottheimer, Golden, Moskowitz, Kaptur, and others.
Democrats also thought the stock ban itself was inadequate
Their objections included:
1. It did not require members to sell stocks they already owned. They could keep existing holdings.
2. They could still sell those stocks, provided they gave advance public notice.
3. Dividends could be reinvested.
4. Democrats called this a “family/Grandma loophole,” allowing certain relatives to trade on behalf of a member or family member.
5. It covered Congress but not the president, vice president or federal judges.
Democrats proposed amendments to close several of those loopholes and to require divestiture, but those amendments failed.
One particularly revealing point: The bill’s own Republican sponsor, Bryan Steil, defended the decision to let members retain existing stocks because forcing divestiture could discourage financially successful people from entering Congress. Democrats responded that this undermined the legislation's central purpose.
And an unusual wrinkle: Republican Rep. Thomas Massie criticized his own party’s strategy, arguing that adding voter ID to a stock-trading bill looked designed to make Democrats vote against it so Republicans could use that vote politically in the election.
Tim Boone
Warsaw, via email
