Cantor: Senate needs to strengthen congressional insider-trading bill

Cantor said if the Senate failed to beef up its version, the House would move forward with its own bill.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said Tuesday that Senate lawmakers should strengthen legislation banning insider trading by top federal officials before sending it along to the House.

If the Senate fails to beef up its legislation, he said the House will take up its own bill.

"If the Senate produces a bill that we believe is strengthened and something that is workable, that certainly is something that will be well-received in the House," Cantor told reporters. "If it is not, it is my intention to move a bill, to bring a bill to the floor in February that does."

In particular, Cantor said that while the Senate bill prohibits trading on private information by members of Congress and staff, it fails to address the same practice by high-ranking employees in the executive branch that have access to similarly valuable information.

"It is unacceptable for any one member of Congress, anybody affiliated with this level of government to profit from insider information or from information that is not available to the public. Period," he said.

Cantor said he was confident that there were some financial actions occurring in government that could garner skepticism, and Congress needed to be clear on prohibiting the practice.

"Certainly, I think that there is activity that exists that could certainly be characterized in a negative light," he said. "Let's make it the law that there will be and is no insider trading going on."

Lawmakers from both parties are jockeying for higher ground on the politically popular legislation with reelection campaigns looming large. With public opinion of Congress reaching all-time lows, some lawmakers are eager to push legislation that appears to crack down on that legislative body.

The Senate voted 93-2 Monday to move forward with its version of the bill, which could be finally approved by the chamber sometime this week.

Similar legislation was under consideration in the House last year. Since then, Cantor has said he wanted to move the bill this year, and expand it to address areas besides financial trading like real estate deals.

Legislation curbing insider trading gained steam in Congress after a November "60 Minutes" report suggested that several top members might have personally profited financially using knowledge obtained within the halls of Congress. Those singled out in the report, including House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), have defended their behavior.

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