A bipartisan coalition of lawmakers had hoped to pass a ban on congressional stock trading before the end of this year's session -- but reporter Austin Ahlman brings word that the bill is now dead thanks in large part to the efforts of House Democratic leaderhsip.
"Negotiators of some of those efforts tell me House Democratic leadership went out of their way this week to kill any momentum for reform," Ahlman writes on Twitter.
In a more detailed report at The Intercept, Ahlman fleshed out how Democratic leaders gave the proposal a slow-motion death.
"After House leaders introduced a bill to curtail stock trading by federal officials on Tuesday, Democrats and Republicans pointed out the discrepancies between the leadership-approved version and the carefully negotiated bipartisan bills that predated it," Ahlman writes. "Those discrepancies led to several members saying they could not vote on the measure without reviewing the text and determining whether the bill could draw enough votes in both chambers to become law."
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After controversy about the new text erupted, House leadership simply pulled the bill from the schedule, thus delaying any potential vote on the measure until after this year's midterm elections -- if even then.
Additionally, Ahlman writes that "several Democratic and Republican staffers involved in earlier bipartisan efforts say House leadership made no effort to consult them on what sort of framework might pass."
