The House could vote as soon as next week on a long-stalled proposal to restrict lawmaker stock-trading, according to four people granted anonymity to describe private leadership deliberations.
Republican leaders discussed scheduling the vote in a private meeting Wednesday morning and plan to move forward pending final conversations with members, the people said. The leaders intend to move it alongside a budget framework for the GOP’s new party-line spending bill, seeing the pre-summer-recess fly-out week as their best chance to finally move the legislation.
While some efforts to crack down on congressional trading have been bipartisan, the legislation GOP leaders are eyeing — the Stop Insider Trading Act — advanced out of the House Administration Committee in January on a party-line vote.
Most Democrats said the measure did not go far enough, because it allows members to keep stocks they already own in contrast with a competing bipartisan proposal that requires divestiture from individual stocks. Two moderate Democrats, Reps. Ed Case of Hawaii and Josh Riley of New York, have cosponsored the bill, which would apply to both the House and Senate.
The Senate has been much cooler to the idea of restricting members’ ability to invest and is not expected to take up the bill if it passes the House.
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