Senators ask to tweak insider-trading bill

By Peter Schroeder - 03/19/12 02:42 PM ET

A bipartisan pair of senators is asking Senate leaders to let them push amendments stripped from legislation barring insider trading by lawmakers, warning the current bill is "significantly weakened."

Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) sent a letter Monday asking for a conference committee to be established to rectify differences between House and Senate versions of the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act. Both lawmakers saw their amendments, included in the version passed by the Senate, trimmed by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) before it was approved in the House.

"Taking up the House-passed bill without the opportunity for the Senate to reassert its position with respect to these provisions would be wrong," they wrote to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.). "These are two of the most important and substantive provisions in the bill."

If Senate leaders opt against a conference committee and simply agree to take up the House version of the bill, the two asked for at least the opportunity to bring their amendments up again for inclusion.

Leahy's amendment would have made it easier for prosecutors to pursue charges of public corruption, while Grassley's would have required "political intelligence" firms that obtain and sell private congressional information to investors to register in a similar fashion to lobbyists.

While members in both parties have been eager to advance legislation making clear that it is illegal to personally profit on private information obtained in the halls of Congress, the bill has been subject to partisan jabbing along the way.

Even though the House version of the bill ultimately received broad support, House Democrats were fiercely critical of Cantor for removing the two amendments in question, even though Cantor maintained they were unworkable and potentially overly broad.

Democrats followed up their votes for the bill with loud calls for a conference committee to be established so the measures could be re-instituted in a final version of the bill.

Grassley even got into the mix, blasting House Republicans for removing his amendment, saying the move "would fulfill Wall Street's wishes."

Since the House passed the STOCK Act in the beginning of February, there has been little action towards putting together a final measure that could become law, even though the president called for such a bill during his State of the Union address.

While no decisions have been made yet, a spokesman for Reid has said he prefers a conference committee. When asked about the fate of the bill on Tuesday, Reid was noncommittal.

"I said here before, we have to get a consent request to move ... it to conference. I don't have that done yet," he said.