CBS News reports that the Senate just passed the STOCK Act to ban Congressional insider trading, but only after subjecting it to 20 proposed amendments:
The STOCK Act - legislation to bar members of Congress from trading stocks based on nonpublic information they have obtained in the course of their congressional work - passed the Senate Thursday in a 96 to 3 vote. ...
Senate Democrats and Republicans began voting on 20 amendments, one by one, early Thursday afternoon, after an agreement was worked out between Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell following contentious negotiations. The amendment barring lawmakers from directly holding individual stocks failed Thursday 26 - 73; the amendment mandating that lawmakers lose their pensions for lobbying was not among those brought to a vote.
One criticism of the original legislation - raised by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor - was that the original bill did not also focus on the executive branch. That issue seems to have been addressed: An amendment to extend the new rules to cover the executive branch passed on Thursday 58-41.
I had hoped that the Senate would pass the bill as reported out of Committee, but I can live with the amendment to extend the bill to the Executive Branch. It wasn't necessary, for the reasons I discuss in Insider Trading Inside the Beltway, but it's like chicken soup--can't hurt and might help. But what about all those other amendments? Did any pass? And, if so, what did they do? Stay tuned.
Who were the three inside trading loving senators who voted no?
