Senate Vote Stalls Stop Insider Trading Act

The Senate on September 30 failed to advance the House-passed Stop Insider Trading Act, with the procedural motion receiving 53 votes in favor and 47 against, short of the 60 needed to proceed. The result leaves the proposed restrictions unenacted and the bill stalled in its current form. The measure would have barred members of Congress, their spouses and dependent children from buying new publicly traded stocks. It would have allowed them to retain existing holdings and sell them under advance-notice rules. The bill also included a requirement for photo identification when voting in federal elections. Democrats opposed advancing the package, arguing both that the stock rules were insufficient and that the voter-ID provision did not belong in the bill. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer called the voting language a poison pill and said the stock-trading provisions did not go far enough. Democrats also noted that the proposal did not cover the president and would have allowed lawmakers to keep stocks they already owned. Republicans defended the measure as a response to concerns about congressional stock trading and voter identification.