Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley voted with Democrats Wednesday to advance his bill to ban US lawmakers from stock trading, over the opposition of other Republicans on the panel and drawing the ire of President Donald Trump.
The question of whether lawmakers should be allowed to trade stocks has sparked contentious debate in the halls of Congress. The bill clearing the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee is the latest sign of growing momentum for enacting a ban on the practice, though it is not yet clear whether the full Senate will weigh in on the measure.
The bill sparked wide-ranging debate during the at-times contentious meeting, including over the reach it would have into the executive branch and whether it would discourage individuals from running for Congress in the future.
Hawley, who has been working on the effort for years, told reporters after the vote, “What the White House wanted was that the president, the vice President not be covered, they’re not, their offices are, but it will be the next office holders,” though he said the White House did not speak to him directly about their concerns.
“Given the concern that some of my colleagues said that they had heard about [the] White House saying, ‘Well, we’re not sure how this will play, how it will work with the president and the vice president,’ I just said, ‘Fine, let’s just, if that’s going to be an obstacle, I don’t want something that’s dead on arrival.’ So I proactively said, ‘Let’s just make the effective date the date at the beginning of the next term for everybody,’ members of Congress and the president, vice president,” Hawley said.
“And that effectively means that President Trump is excluded. And you know, you’ve heard the Democrats say, like they didn’t love that part of it, but they want to get a – they want to get a result, and I want to get a result.”
Asked about the bill later, Hawley said, “The trading ban would be, would affect – go into effect 90 days for everybody. Yeah, but my understanding from colleagues of mine who talked to [the Office of Legislative Affairs] was that they were, the White House wanted some clarity on the divestiture piece, and so it wouldn’t apply to him or the vice president.”
Still, Hawley’s alignment with Democrats in the vote prompted anger from Trump, who called him “second-tier.”
“I don’t think real Republicans want to see their President, who has had unprecedented success, TARGETED, because of the ‘whims’ of a second-tier Senator named Josh Hawley!” Trump posted on Truth Social Wednesday.
Earlier in the day, Trump had appeared to signal an openness to the measure but said he would have to review the specifics.
“This just happened, so I’ll take a look at it, but conceptually, I like it,” Trump told reporters.
Asked about Trump’s Truth Social post, Hawley said, “I haven’t talked to him yet about it. I mean, I want to get into a place where he supports this, because if he doesn’t, it’s just not going to go anywhere. And I want to see this get enacted into law.”
“If he just says, ‘I want to veto this,’ then that will just be it. So I don’t want that.”
Several Republican senators got into tense exchanges during the committee meeting, debating a range of issues related to the measure.
Sen. Rick Scott strongly criticized Hawley’s bill, saying, “How many people in the audience want to be poor, how many of you don’t want to make money? Anybody want to be poor? I don’t. The idea that we’re going to attack people who make money is wrong.”
Sen. Ron Johnson slammed the bill as “legislative demagoguery” and argued that a ban would discourage people from the private sector from running for Congress.
Johnson later said “have there been abuses? Yeah…but again this is self-flagellation, this is blowing something way out of proportion like there’s all kind of corruption, all kinds of insider deals trading all kinds of insider information, and yet I can’t think of one time that I heard something in a secure briefing or some piece of information and I said ‘Hey I can make money off of this one?’”
Asked after the meeting about the concerns expressed by his Republican colleagues, Hawley said, “They don’t want to ban stock trading. I just think that’s a mistake.”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune said he’s doubtful his leadership team will put the bill on the Senate floor for a full vote, noting that Hawley was the only Republican to vote for it in the committee.
CNN’s Lauren Fox contributed to this report.
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