A raft of internal GOP fights are awaiting Speaker Mike Johnson when he brings the House back from its shutdown recess — including a major brawl over legislation banning congressional stock trading.
Rep. Chip Roy of Texas said in an interview Monday he and fellow Republicans are ready to push GOP leaders to put their bipartisan stock trading ban bill on the floor whenever the House returns — or possibly use a discharge petition to do an end-run around Johnson.
“We’re going to have a vote on stock trading,” Roy said Monday after appearing alongside Johnson at a news conference on the shutdown.
“When we get back, we got to have a conference discussion about this, or we’re going to be moving forward,” he added, referencing a discharge petition already filed on a separate stock trading bill by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.).
Roy, a member of the House Rules Committee, said Republicans need to figure out the timing going into November and December for when the legislation could go to the floor. He said GOP leaders, who have been skeptical of the effort, are “having conversations” about the legislation.
There’s skepticism inside Johnson’s leadership circle about how to pass such a bill given firm opposition from a swath of Republicans. But Johnson has pledged in private conversations to work on the matter, according to two other Republicans granted anonymity to describe the private conversations, and Roy said Monday that he is feeling pressure to act.
“I think there’s going to still be this sort of give and take about how serious some of us are on a real ban as opposed to just some soft limits,” he said. “So we’ve got to keep working on that.”
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