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A bipartisan movement to ban members of Congress from trading stocks
failed to pass the House of Representatives this week, assuring that
no action will be taken on the issue until after the midterm
elections — if at all.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she hoped to pass a bill before
members left for a lengthy recess. But some in her own party are now
accusing her of manufacturing repeated delays and unnecessary
roadblocks.

Pelosi, who previously opposed a prohibition on congressional stock
trading, surprised many who have been pushing for a ban by
introducing her own lengthy ethics bill earlier this week.

Pelosi’s bill looks like an expansive proposal on its face. It would
bar virtually all senior government officials from trading stocks,
not just those in Congress.

But it contains wide loopholes that have infuriated ethics
watchdogs, and critics said expanding the proposed ban to the
executive and judiciary branches seems designed to draw new
opposition and slow its chances of passing.

Sure enough, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, who decides which bills go
to a vote, told reporters Tuesday that the proposal had arrived too
late and introduced too many new issues for him to schedule a vote
before the November midterms.

The bill was also written without input from many key lawmakers in
the ongoing push to ban congressional stock trades, according to
good-government groups and members of Congress.

One of those members, Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.), who
introduced a ban with Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) in January 2021,
strafed Hoyer and Pelosi on Friday for introducing “a kitchen-sink
package that they knew would fail.”

“I don’t think this bill was written to pass the House,” she told
Business Insider. In another interview, she called for new party
leadership.

“Absolutely this was a bill designed not to pass.”

- Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette, manager of government affairs at the
Project on Government Oversight
Watchdogs echoed her suspicions that Pelosi and Hoyer were trying to
snuff out any chance of reform.

“Absolutely this was a bill designed not to pass,” said Dylan
Hedtler-Gaudette, manager of government affairs at the Project on
Government Oversight. “Pelosi is very good at her job when she wants
to get something done. … The approach they took was not designed to
get anything done. It was designed to say, ‘We tried.’”

Among the issues critics highlighted is the fact that the bill would
obliterate the high standard for blind trusts in favor of a standard
that would allow government officials to conceal their assets from
the public.

“This bill is the equivalent of a wrecking ball for the executive
branch ethics program,” said Walter Shaub, a senior ethics fellow at
the Project on Government Oversight who ran the U.S. Office of
Government Ethics until he publicly clashed with former President
Donald Trump’s administration.

Parts of the bill dealing with the judiciary are written poorly,
other critics said, including language that is likely
unconstitutional.

“It’s just inviting new resistance when we know the problem is most
acute in the legislative branch,” he said.

What’s more, Congress has already passed part of a package to reform
ethics requirements for federal judges. A second bill, which would
expand those reforms to the Supreme Court, is still awaiting a vote.

On Friday, Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.), a co-author of those judicial
reforms, went on Twitter to needle House leadership about bringing
the Supreme Court ethics bill to a vote.

Pelosi shot back Friday against accusations that her bill was
designed to fail, saying her proposal had taken Spanberger’s
proposed reforms and “made the bill stronger.”

“Whatever the members want to do, I fully support,” she said.

But good-government groups are accepting that a congressional stock
ban has little hope under the current Congress.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/pelosi-congress-insider-
trading_n_63374676e4b0e376dbf6c714