Republicans wanted to stop lawmakers from trading stocks on secret knowledge.
It failed on Wednesday with a 53 to 47 vote. Every Democrat voted no. Every Republican voted yes. The bill died because Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer refused to let it pass. He argued that the bill was a trap. Schumer claimed the bill was designed to fail from the start. He called it “trickery” and “skullduggery.” He said Democrats knew they could stop it.
The bill started in the House. It passed earlier this month with 232 votes. Only 13 Democrats voted for it. The rest, 198 of them, said no. Now it hit the Senate. According to Fox News, Schumer maintained that opponents do not desire this bill to become law. He added, “So they put a poison pill in that they knew would tank it.” The poison pill was a nationwide voter ID mandate. He said it would stop millions from voting. Per Daily Signal, Schumer noted that Senate Democrats have defeated such voter ID bills twice already.
Schumer contended that genuine Republican concern for halting member stock trading would not involve attaching a defeated voter ID bill, which Senate Democrats have already rejected twice. He said they don’t care about the trading ban. They only care about the vote rules.
Sen. Kevin Cramer saw the vote clearly. On X, he stated that Senate Democrats obstructed legislation aimed at preventing government insider trading and mandating legal identification for voting. He noted that “North Dakotans overwhelmingly support both these measures, yet when it came time to vote, Democrats said no.”
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise was furious. His post claimed that every Senate Democrat aligned with every House Democrat to vote against prohibiting congressional stock trading. He said “@RepBryanSteil’s Stop Insider Trading Act is the accountability the American people demand.” But he added, “But every Democrat blocked it from becoming law.”
Sen. Pete Ricketts, serving as the lead Senate sponsor, wrote that Senate Democrats just blocked his bill to ban congressional insider trading. He pointed out, “The House passed this bill in a bipartisan manner.” He called the failure “discouraging.” This is not just about stocks. It is about trust. The bill would have stopped members of Congress and their spouses from buying stocks. It would have required public notice before they could sell.
RedState noted that Republicans attempted to address two critical issues important to voters. One was the stock ban. The other was the voter ID policy. Democrats in both the House and Senate argued the trade ban was not strong enough. They also said the voter ID part was too aggressive. But the stock ban passed the House with support from 218 Republicans. It had 13 Democrats too. The Senate version failed because of the voter ID addition. Per Daily Signal, the act was bound to fail due to this combination. Schumer declared that both legislative pieces target the core of matters Americans care about deeply and passionately. Yet he still voted to kill the whole thing. He remarked that we will observe whether Democrats accept yes as a sufficient answer.
The American people want their leaders to trade fairly. They want their votes to be counted with ID. Schumer decided those two things cannot happen together.
