House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer outside the Capitol on July 29, 2022.
Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images
The House was set to vote on a Pelosi-backed bill to ban members of Congress from trading stocks.
But the legislation had a major loophole, and leaders now say members need more time to read the bill.
“I don’t think this bill was written to pass the House,” said Rep. Abigail Spanberger.
The House of Representatives will not vote this week on a new bill backed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to ban lawmakers and other senior government officials from owning and trading stocks.
That all but assures Congress will not act on the issue before the November midterm elections.
The excuse? Not enough time to read the far-reaching 26-page bill, the text of which was released — after almost six months of radio silence — by the Committee on House Administration late on Tuesday night.
That’s despite months of public pressure in the wake of Insider’s Conflicted Congress investigation, which revealed dozens of violations of the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act, highlighted numerous potential conflicts of interests driven by lawmakers’ stock holdings, and exposed paltry enforcement of the rules designed to prevent insider trading.
Several polls have indicated broad, bipartisan support for a ban. A new Data for Progress poll released just on Wednesday found that 77% of voters back the measure.
Adding insult to injury, good-government groups have already identified a major blind-trust loophole in the Pelosi-backed “Combatting Financial Conflicts of Interest in Government Act,” which they said came about largely due to a lack of serious engagement with ethics experts.
“I don’t think this bill was written to pass the House,” said Democratic Rep. Abigail Spanberger of Virginia, who first introduced her own bipartisan bill to ban congressional stock trading more than two years ago with Republican Rep. Chip Roy of Texas.
Only a handful of Democratic lawmakers have publicly voiced opposition to enacting the ban ever since Pelosi’s initial dismissal of the idea was met with overwhelming public outrage, prompting her to acquiesce to enacting new reforms.
But one of those few lawmakers happens to be House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, according to some reports. Hoyer, who controls the floor schedule, confirmed to Insider that there will be no vote this week.
“First of all, I haven’t read the language. It just came out 36 hours ago,” he said at the Capitol on Thursday, declining to confirm that he’d oppose the bill. “I don’t know, we’ll take a look at it.”
Democratic Caucus Chair Hakeem Jeffries and Vice Chair Pete Aguilar departing a press conference in June 2022.
AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite
‘Punt, after punt, after punt’
At their weekly press conference on Thursday, House Democratic Caucus Chair Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York and Vice Chair Rep. Pete Aguilar of California seemed to indicate little urgency for holding a vote on the part of rank-and-file members.
“The issue was not raised in the caucus meeting today,” said Jeffries.
But the duo also sought to downplay the idea that significant parts of the caucus — perhaps the dozens with significant stock holdings themselves — might actually be opposed to the idea.
“I’ve heard from members who aren’t supportive of the bill. It’s a thin margin. Whether members would vote against the bill is a separate conversation,” said Aguilar. “They’re going through the bill. The final bill text was just released recently.”
Spanberger said while she agrees that reviewing the text is important, the timing of the text’s release indicated that leadership was “endeavoring to delay a vote on any bill” that would enact a stock-trade ban.
“It seems like it’s been a punt, after punt, after punt, distraction after distraction after distraction,” she said.
Roy, who’s pledged to vote against the Pelosi-backed bill primarily due to concerns about the rushed, top-down process for putting forward the expansive bill, told reporters outside the House chamber that he thought there were “a lot of efforts to purposely make this die under its own weight.”
Democratic Rep. Andy Kim of New Jersey, whose own bill to ban stock trading is just as expansive and wide-ranging as what Democratic leadership proposed, offered a more conciliatory assessment of the situation.
“The fact that we have something on paper now, that people can react to in a more unified way, I think we’re moving forward,” he said. “I’ve learned that timing in this building is not something you should ever set your clock to. There’s always delays in votes, there’s always other things that are happening.”
The House could still take action on the legislation in the so-called “lame duck” session after the midterms, when Democratic senators may introduce their own consensus bill on the issue. But with the election in the rearview mirror, lawmakers might be less susceptible to public pressure.
Spanberger balked when asked about attempting to amend the Pelosi-backed bill, saying she’d prefer to get “back to the basics” of the matter. “They brought in a whole host of new elements,” she said.
Roy was even more blunt, criticizing the way the House of Representatives is run under Pelosi, where open debate on amendments rarely takes place on the floor.
“You got to go through all the frickin’ cardinals who run their committees, and ask permission, then they decide which amendments to get in their pre-cooked scheme on running the universe,” he said. “So, you know, no, I can’t offer an amendment.”