Congress Sort Of Does The Right Thing

The House today overwhelmingly passed a bill to ban insider trading by members of Congress and to impose new ethics requirements on lawmakers and federal agency officials following a similar lopsided vote by the Senate less than three weeks after President Obama demanded such action in his State of the Union speech.

The swift response and 417-to-2 and 96-to-3 votes reflected concerns over the low esteem in which voters hold lawmakers but the votes concealed deep differences and a reluctance by House Republican leaders to stop making nice to Wall Street and other monied interests.

Democrats said that the Republican leaders had weakened the Senate-passed bill by stripping out a provision that would regulate firms that collect so-called political intelligence for hedge funds, mutual funds and other investors. Under the Senate bill, such firms would have to register and report their activities, as lobbyists do. In place of this requirement, the House version of the bill calls for . . . get this, a study of whether to require registration.

Senator Charles E. Grassley, the Iowa Republican who wrote the proposed disclosure requirement for political intelligence firms, said it was “astonishing and extremely disappointing that the House would fulfill Wall Street’s wishes by killing this provision.”

The bill now goes back to the Senate. The two chambers could try to work out their differences in a conference committee or through informal negotiations.