Opinion: Josh Hammer Asks Whether Senate Democrats Will Block the Congressional Stock Trading Ban Again After the Midterms
Hammer argues Senate Democrats killed the Stop Insider Trading Act on Sept. 30 and says it should return in the lame-duck session. The column is his argument, and Democrats gave a different reason for their votes.
This is a summary of an opinion column in Fox News by Josh Hammer. The views are the author's, not RightNewsRightNow's.
The argument. Hammer says Americans agree that members of Congress should not get rich trading stocks while writing the laws that move them, and that the failure to ban it is part of a broader rot. He says Senate Democrats should take up the bill again before the year ends.
The polling he cites. Hammer says a CNBC poll found 36% of voters name corruption as the nation's top issue, ahead of grocery and gas costs. He says 93% of respondents think members of Congress and the president should not own or trade stock in companies with federal contracts, and 89% say companies owned by a sitting president's immediate family should not get federal contracts. He also says Democrats still hold a 35% to 31% edge on which party would better handle corruption.
The vote. On Sept. 30, Hammer says, Senate Democrats rejected the Stop Insider Trading Act after it had passed the House with Democratic votes. It would have barred members of Congress, their spouses and dependent children from buying new stock in public companies while in office, and it would have required public notice before selling. He says every Senate Democrat voted no. He writes that Sen. Chuck Schumer said Republicans loaded it with "poison pills" and that it was toothless. Hammer says the bill included a voter ID provision, which he says most Americans support.
The Pelosi example. Hammer points to the Pelosi household's July 1, 2024 sale of 2,000 Visa shares, valued at between $500,000 and $1 million, less than three months before the Justice Department sued Visa, after which he says the stock dropped. He also cites Paul Pelosi's 2022 purchase of more than $1 million in Nvidia call options before a chip-subsidy vote. He quotes attorney Michael Caputo questioning the Visa suit. We have not checked these figures. The column does not include a response from the Pelosi household.
Our note: this is a partisan argument from a conservative commentator two days before the election. The Democratic objection he describes, that the bill was designed to fail, comes to us only through his summary of it.