The House on Thursday joined the Senate in voting to explicitly prohibit members of Congress and other top officials from making investments on insider information. But an effort to bridle purveyors of Capitol Hill political intelligence could delay the bill's enactment.
House Republicans stripped out provisions from the Senate bill that would:
- Treat people who sell inside information about Congress like lobbyists and make them file reports detailing what they spend and with whom they talk.
- Restore the tools to prosecutors to bring public corruption cases against state and federal officials.
The Senate is unlikely to accept those changes, according to a Democratic leadership aide speaking on condition of anonymity because no final decision has been made. That would mean negotiators would have to find a compromise agreeable to both houses before the bill could be signed into law. The bill passed the House on a 417-2 vote just a week after the Senate approved its version 96-3. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., said the vote "puts some pressure on the Senate" to accept the House bill. Under the House bill, lawmakers, their aides and the other top policymakers would have to disclose to the public new financial transactions within 30 or 45 days from when they occurred, depending on the circumstances.
The bill also would prevent members of Congress from getting special access to initial public offerings of stock. That provision was aimed at House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., whose husband purchased shares in a Visa IPO in 2008 while a credit card reform bill was before the House. Lawmakers also would have to start disclosing all their mortgages, ending an exemption for loans on personal residences. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, sponsored the Senate provision that would make people who collect information from lawmakers and their aides and sell it to investors subject to the same registration and reporting requirements as lobbyists.
Cantor deleted it, inserting in its place language calling for a study of so-called political intelligence firms. "Think of the wording, political intelligence. There's so much question about what that even means," he said, explaining that the requirement might make it harder for constituents to ask lawmakers about the status of bills.
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