Checking In With Congress

Yesterday afternoon, a bipartisan group of House members—running the gamut from progressives to Trump-cheering conservatives—held a press conference in the Capitol to announce the introduction of a unified bill to ban members of Congress from trading, or owning, stocks.

The legislation, titled the Restore Trust in Congress Act, emerged from discussions held since April aiming to consolidate several bills that would restrict stock trading and ownership by lawmakers over conflict of interest concerns. The measure is led by Reps. Chip Roy (R-Texas) and Seth Magaziner (D-R.I.), joined by others including Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), and Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.). More House co-sponsors joined yesterday along with its unveiling, split evenly between the two parties.

MAGA-allied Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), a co-sponsor, joined the press conference. Over the summer, Luna vowed to file a discharge petition that, if signed by a majority of House members, would force a floor vote on a stock-trading and stock-owning ban for lawmakers.

President Donald Trump offered support Monday for GOP Rep. Anna Paulina Luna’s push to circumvent House Republican leaders and force a vote on a congressional stock trading ban.

Trump on Monday morning shared a post on Truth Social with a video of Luna’s pushing her promised discharge petition that would force a House vote on banning member trading that Speaker Mike Johnson has so far bottled up. Trump’s post included a previous comment that called the effort a “MASSIVE WIN” and praised her for deploying “a procedural loophole” to take action.

The point is that the Democrats are focusing on this because they’re pretty close to a deal in advance. Indeed, John Thune is openly inviting Dems to “come forward with a solution”, which is code for Democrats saying in advance what cuts they’ll propose to pay for the subsidies or what future moments of power — like another CR fight — they’ll give up in advance in order to get the subsidies restored until the midterms are over. If the optimal plan is to force a confrontation on the most salient and Dem-leaning issue, then what Senate Democrats are planning is the exact opposite of that because they’re trying to avoid a confrontation.

And a confrontation isn’t just good in the abstract or the way to have some kind of blue-state catharsis. Without a big confrontation, it’s just a Senate sausage-making deal like every other continuing resolution negotiation. No one who’s not very plugged into politics and thoroughly committed in their politics will even know it happened. Most of the people who are going to be hit by those subsidy hits don’t even know about it yet. And if Democrats “win” this it will be as though it never happened at all. To think up-for-grabs voters who rely on Obamacare subsidies will hear about that lo-fi negotiation and think, “Wow, I’m stoked the Democrats got my subsidies renewed for six months so I don’t have to worry about this until after the midterms!” is comical and absurd. Democrats will get no credit for that because no one will know it happened. So that whole plan is one that does nothing for Obamacare recipients or for Democrats electorally or to help the country try to fight off an authoritarian takeover.

If the decision is that you make this fight over health care coverage, you’ve got to up the ante substantially. That means bringing back the Obamacare subsidies on a permanent basis and the Medicaid budgets that were cut as well. They’re both really really important. That is a real difference between the two parties — not one that amounts to a cryptic point of agreement. And it’s one that is likely to trigger a confrontation on a scale that might get most of the country to focus on the fight and to understand what it’s about. The “salience” of the issue doesn’t matter if no one knows you were fighting for it.