From the NYT:
In an effort to regain public trust, the Senate voted Monday to take up a bill that would prohibit members of Congress from trading stocks and other securities on the basis of confidential information they receive as lawmakers.
Senators of both parties said the bill was desperately needed at a time when the public approval rating of Congress had sunk below 15 percent.
The insider trading bill is called the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act, or Stock Act. A similar bill passed the House last year.
The bill states that members and employees of Congress are not exempt from the federal law and regulations that ban insider trading.
“No member of Congress and no employee of Congress shall use any nonpublic information derived from the individual’s position as a member of Congress or employee of Congress, or gained from performance of the individual’s duties, for personal benefit,” the bill says.
. . . The bill also requires members of Congress to disclose the purchase or sale of stocks, bonds, commodities futures and other forms of securities within 30 days of transactions. The information would be posted on the Web in a searchable format.
. . . the bill does not subject lawmakers to a second type of restriction suggested by Mr. Obama, who said Congress should “limit any elected official from owning stocks in industries they impact.”
This seems likely to pass, the Buffet tax less so:
Households with adjusted annual gross incomes over $1 million would prepare their taxes as they do now, with all the deductions, credits and loopholes intact. They would also calculate what 30 percent of their adjusted gross income amounts to. They would then pay whichever amount was larger.
Republicans showed no sign of coming to the table on the Buffett Rule legislation. Senator Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, said he had breakfast with Mr. Buffett on Sunday, but rejected his personal entreaties. He cited an estimate by the liberal-leaning Citizens for Tax Justice that the proposal would raise $50 billion a year, a small percentage of a budget deficit that will probably top $1 trillion.
