The House cleared a ban on lawmaker stock trading in a 232-198 vote, but the Senate isn’t expected to move on it soon, with just two weeks left in Washington before the August recess.
Although there’s bipartisan consensus on Capitol Hill for curbing lawmakers’ trading, the issue has become increasingly partisan.
Democrats have heavily criticized the GOP-led proposal for not including the executive branch and for allowing members to keep their existing investments. And only about a dozen Democrats in the House, largely from purple districts, supported the legislation on Wednesday, after President Donald Trump’s SAVE Act voter ID legislation was attached to it.
The impasse has Democrats vowing to act on their own if they flip the House this fall. Rep. Joe Morelle, D-N.Y., the top Democrat on the Administration Committee, railed against the vote as a “remarkable display of cynicism.”