Senate backs STOCK Act; House vote next week?
By: Dale Eisman
February 3, 2012 
2 Comments
You can tell it’s an election year; higher ethical standards suddenly are in vogue on Capitol Hill.
Senators practically tripped over themselves on Thursday as they scrambled to add teeth to the STOCK Act, which started as a simple attempt to ensure that members of Congress live by the same rules as the rest of us when it comes to making stock trades based on insider information.
Senate rules and customs that generally limit floor debate on amendments to legislation were conveniently discarded as members got caught up in the reform spirit. The bill passed, 96-3, after they extended its rules against insider trading to cover executive branch officials as well as members of Congress. Also added to the bill were a ban on gifts worth more than $1,000 to public officials and new disclosure requirements on a Washington growth industry – political intelligence – whose practitioners specialize in tracking the behind-the-scenes development of legislation and regulations using it to inform their stock trading.
“This is mass repentance for past sins,” Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Ct., told the Washington Post.
Insider trading has long been illegal of course. But after CBS’s “60 Minutes” reported last fall that some lawmakers appeared to have found a way around the law and were cashing in on info obtained by virtue of their membership on various regulatory committees, Sens. Scott Brown, R-Ma., and Kirsten Gillibrand, D-NY., rushed to introduce the STOCK Act.
Similar legislation was on a fast track in the House until Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., quietly intervened to block committee action that would have sent it to the floor in early December. Democrats and reform-minded Republicans worried that Cantor was buckling to pressure from veteran lawmakers who wanted to preserve their freedom to make stock trades, but Cantor insisted he simply wanted to give the House more time to consider, and strengthen, the legislation.
The majority leader continued singing that tune after Thursday’s vote, pronouncing himself pleased with the Senate action and promising to bring the STOCK Act to the House floor next week.
We’ll be watching.
So, after reading your website and the things you say you stand for I would assume you support the candidacy of Ron Paul as the only candidate who truly stand for the common man. Or is this just another liberal organization hiding behind the skirts of real Americans.
Common Cause is a non-partisan organization. We don’t endorse or oppose particular candidates. We work on a variety of good government issues, among them campaign finance, lobbying, conflict of interest and other ethics-related subjects. We don’t think of ourselves as either liberal or conservative and we’re definitely not hiding — behind skirts or anything else.