Leader Schumer Floor Remarks Slamming Republicans’ Spineless Stock Trading Ban

Washington, D.C. - Today, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) spoke on the Senate floor to criticize Republicans' last-ditch efforts to save face by pushing a toothless member stock trading ban paired with a voting restriction poison pill. Leader Schumer reiterated Senate Democrats' commitment to passing a strong, bipartisan bill that actually bans member stock trading. Below are Senator Schumer's remarks, which can also be viewed here:

Only Senate Republicans would dare call a bill that permits Members of Congress to continue to own, sell, and, in some instances, buy stocks a "stock trading ban."

They can't be serious. The Republicans' bill is a permission slip for corruption - not a stock trading ban.

There's been a real, bipartisan effort to ban Members of Congress from trading stocks and profiting off insider information. I've supported that effort for years. Last year, the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee advanced a strong, bipartisan bill that would actually ban [member] stock [trading] - not pretend to do so. Senate Republicans didn't want it.

The Senate GOP let their counterparts in the House take out all of the ban's teeth and fill it with poison pills so it could never pass. This bill has no reform, no accountability, no substance.

Republicans want to explicitly allow members to continue trading stocks in privately held companies - including in companies the members oversee. A formula for disaster and corruption. That's as clear a conflict of interest as one can imagine.

Under [the] Republican bill, members would still get to own and sell stocks. And most importantly, this bill doesn't do anything - anything - to stop Donald Trump from trading stocks. I guess Republicans forgot that Trump has made nearly thirty thousand stock trades in the past year and raked in billions - more than all of Congress combined.

Democrats have offered multiple bills that would close all these loopholes. Republicans have done nothing to stop corruption - not in the White House, not in Congress, nowhere. The Republicans' toothless stock trading bill is as ineffective as a screen door on a submarine.

And let's be clear, they don't even want it to pass. They designed this bill to fail. They loaded their legislation up with poison pills that they knew would make this bill dead on arrival. They're even afraid of this wet noodle, weak, milquetoast bill. The voting restrictions in this bill, and the voting restrictions they added as a poison pill, are more extreme than any law in any state. It would make voting more difficult in every state than it is now. They're some of the most twisted, radical schemes Trump has ever dreamed up to rig our election. Republicans know no one wants these provisions, so they included them to kill their own bill.

This hollow bill isn't a stock trading ban - it's Republicans' last-ditch effort to save face.

If Republicans' closing pitch is a bill that would let them continue to profit off their office and allow Trump to rig the election, that's their problem. Americans don't buy it.

###