House OKS insider trading bill
WASHINGTON — The House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a bill Thursday to ban insider trading by members of Congress and to impose new ethics requirements on lawmakers and federal agency officials.
The 417-2 vote occurred less than three weeks after President Barack Obama demanded such action in his State of the Union address. The Senate approved a similar bill by a vote of 96-3 on Feb. 2.
The swift response and the debate in both chambers showed how defensive and anxious lawmakers have become about the low esteem in which Congress is held. Its public approval rating has sunk below 15 percent.
“We need to stop the insidious practice of insider trading, giving members of this body an unfair advantage over Americans who sent us here to represent them,” said Rep. Kathy Hochul, D-N.Y.
The lopsided votes concealed deep disagreements over details of the legislation, which now goes back to the Senate. The two chambers
Republicans stripped a provision from the bipartisan bill to regulate firms that gather political intelligence.
could try to work out their differences in a conference committee or through informal negotiations.
Democrats said House Republican leaders weakened the Senate bill by stripping out a provision that would, for the first time, regulate firms that collect “political intelligence” for hedge funds, private equity firms and other investors. Under the Senate bill, such firms would have to register and report their activities, as lobbyists do.
In place of this requirement, the House calls for a study of whether to require the registration of people who collect political intelligence for the use of investors.
Rep. Louise M. Slaughter, D-N.Y., who has been pushing ethics legislation since 2006, said, “It appears that the House Republican leadership could not stomach pressure from the political intelligence community, which is unregulated and unseen and operates in the dark.”
Sen. Charles E. Grassley, R-iowa, who wrote the proposed disclosure requirement for political intelligence firms, said it was “astonishing and extremely disappointing that the House would fulfill Wall Street’s wishes by killing this provision.”
The House majority leader, Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia, said the political intelligence section of the Senate bill was flawed.
“That provision raises an awful lot of questions,” Cantor said Thursday on the House floor. “There is a lot of discussion and debate about who and what would qualify and fall under the suggested lan- guage that came from the Senate. That is why we are calling for a study.”
The chamber’s Democratic leader, Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, said the Housepassed bill had “serious omissions” and was “much diminished” from the Senate version. She supported it as a way to advance the legislation but said, “I don’t want anyone to interpret the strong vote for it to be a seal of approval.”
Some Republicans described the bill as an overreaction, but voted for it anyway, saying they could not easily explain their concerns to a restive public. The votes against the bill were cast by Reps. John Campbell of California and Rob Woodall of Georgia, both Republicans.