Earlier this year, I wrote an opinion piece for The Daily Signal after Heritage Action issued support for the Stop Insider Trading Act as the bill gained steam on Capitol Hill.
The piece focused largely on questions I was constantly getting from conservative allies and Hill staff.
This was already solved under Obama, right? What was Congress considering legislatively to fix the problem? And why would this fix be more effective than what is in place now?
Those questions are now moot.
Senate Democrats, true to form, voted in lockstep against the Stop Insider Trading Act. Even Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., despite saying he would support a stock trading ban, voted no.
Perhaps he does not want the law strengthened because he has already been caught violating current, less restrictive reporting requirements.
Other Democrats deflected from the substance of the bill rather than own up to their votes. Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., called the bill “Skullduggery” and blamed a voter ID rider as a “poison pill.”
Before diving into the intricacies of this Democratic betrayal, it is important to revisit how we got here.
In January, the Committee on House Administration, Chairman and the bill’s lead sponsor Rep. Bryan Steil, R-Wis., introduced the Stop Insider Trading Act in the House with an extensive list of cosponsors, including Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, and Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., demonstrating buy-in from across the Republican conference.
Two days later, the Committee advanced the bill with all Democrats voting in opposition. This was the first indication of Democratic obstruction despite claiming to want to stop insider trading. Committee Democrats offered amendments aiming to doom the bill choosing to focus on punitive measures to target the President rather than strengthening the text.
At the State of the Union in February, President Donald Trump further elevated the issue to one of national prominence. His call to pass restrictions on insider trading in Congress received one of the few bipartisan applause lines of the night as Democrats recognized remaining seated in front of a national audience would cause major political damage.
Restricting members of Congress from insider trading regularly polls over 80% with Republicans, Democrats, and independents. According to a poll from the University of Maryland’s Program for Public Consultation, 86% of Americans “favor prohibiting stock-trading in individual companies by Members of Congress.”
Despite broad consensus, other important items like the SAVE America Act took priority in the ensuing months, but Chairman Steil and other stalwarts like Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., ensured that the issue never dropped from the news cycle.
Ahead of the August recess, House Republicans scheduled the vote, and Democrats were sent scrambling. The White House issued a Statement of Administration Policy lauding the bill. Would Democrats vote against the bill so as not to give the president and House Republicans a win?
Ahead of consideration, recognizing that Democrats were setting up to oppose anyway, House Republicans also decided to pair the legislation with the Voter ID language from the SAVE America, adding yet another 80/20 issue.
The Stop Insider Trading Act passed the House, 232-198, with 100% of Republicans voting in favor and only 13 vulnerable Democrats defying their party leadership to vote for the bill.
This bipartisan House passage set up an opportunity for the Senate to take up the bill. The Stop Inside Trading Act’s Senate sponsor, Pete Ricketts, R-Neb., and Senate lead of the Voter ID Act Jon Husted, R-Ohio, demanded a vote to give the American people absolute clarity on where Senate Democrats stood on these two important issues.
Thus, the claim that Senate Democrats would have passed the bill were it not for voter ID is absolute garbage.
From the start, Ranking Member Joseph Morelle, D-N.Y., and committee Democrats voted against the bill, and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York rallied Democrats to nix the bill because it didn’t apply to executive branch officials despite past acknowledgments that Congress had a stock trading problem.
House Democrats say that they support a ban on insider trading but then deflect, claiming they want to take power and pass a stronger bill. But when Democrats under President Barack Obama passed the STOCK Act, they lied to the American people when they said they fixed the problem.
Ultimately, congressional Democrats’ grand strategy is to object, resist, and block solutions for the American people, and then call Republicans ineffective. They promise that if only they were in power, Democrats would usher in a utopia.
The American people see through it. Democrats’ refusal to come to the table on clear 80/20 issues continues to be exposed.
The divide between those who want to govern and those who just want power gets clearer every day, just in time for accountability come November.
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[ H/T The Daily Signal ]
