-9999
Floor Speech
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. MORENO. Mr. President, so I think it is important to clear up a couple of things in no particular order. First of all, I did not cosponsor the HONEST Act. I was the cosponsor of the PELOSI Act, which was a tribute--an honor--to the Member of the House of Representatives that made grift on this job an absolute master class.
Your Representative from Northern California came here almost five decades ago and has managed to build a $300 million net worth. Her Twitter account is one of the most followed accounts, as my colleague from Nebraska pointed out. So I was very proud to sponsor the PELOSI Act. In fact, it is extraordinarily similar to the exact same measure my colleague from Utah and my colleague from Nebraska have proposed, as has the Presiding Officer, my colleague from Ohio. So just to clear that up.
Then the next question was: Well, why would you not sponsor a bill called the HONEST Act? I mean--my God--how do you be anti-honest? Well, that bill basically bans the ownership of all assets. You can't even own them. So if you have mutual funds, stocks, equities, investments, you have to get rid of all of that.
So, basically, that would be insane. There is no other way to look at that. The Democrats put that in place during a Homeland Security meeting which went something like this. We sat down to talk about the PELOSI Act, and they gave us 15 pages of amended documents and said: Hey, we are going to vote on this right now.
And, again--I should have predicted it, honestly, because it was a tribute to Nancy Pelosi, who said: Well, you have to vote for the bill before you know what is in it.
Of course, Republicans said: We are not going to vote for something we haven't read--because, again, that is insane. But it wasn't as insane as what is actually in that bill.
Now, let's go back to what we are really doing here tonight. We could pass this today. Tomorrow, the President of the United States could sign into law a ban on insider trading. This is a 100-percent zero issue. Sometimes we talk about 80-20 issues. There is not an American citizen--well, maybe Paul Pelosi--who would be against this.
But all Americans want us to get this done, and it is very commonsense. My colleague from Nebraska worked diligently on this. It is a great bill. It says if you own stocks when you get here, you can't buy more--so, therefore, you can't use the information--and you can't sell stocks without a 7-day notice period, which, in effect, eliminates any kind of advantage that you would have.
It is a very good bill. It applies to all Members of Congress. We should be able to get that done. We should be able to ban insider trading without Democrats blocking that vote.
My colleague, I believe, from Nebraska--if the Presiding Officer could ask him; I want to be clear--he has asked for a vote at 60; is that correct?
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. MORENO. Mr. President, so I would ask unanimous consent that we do that.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. MORENO. I am objecting. Sorry. Well, let me--just continuing. So let's talk about voter ID really quickly.
My colleague from California said that the Republicans are not united on voter ID, and that is absolutely, absolutely, positively false. This is really important because you can't make accusations here that are false.
My colleague from Ohio, the Presiding Officer, has put forward the exact, in essence, voter ID bill, and it was 53 out of 53 Republicans that voted for that--53 out of 53. That is 100 percent of Republicans. If I did that math correctly, I believe that 53 out of 53 is 100 percent.
Where he is correct is that Democrats are united in their opposition. There wasn't a single Democrat that voted for a stand-alone voter ID bill. Tonight, we have the opportunity to do that--ban insider trading and get voter ID on the floor.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. MORENO. Mr. President, reserving my right to object, the bill that my colleague from Nebraska, my colleague from Ohio, and my colleague from Utah is proposing is a bill that has already passed the House of Representatives. It has massive bipartisan support. Lots of Democrats voted for that in the House. If we pass it, it can become law. Putting that bill on the floor at 60 is a very low-threshold ask.
I think the American people deserve to know what each Member of this Chamber decides to do on banning insider trading and voter ID.
The proposal that my colleague from California is putting on the floor is a bill that has neither gotten through any committee where it has been actually read by committee members. It is a bill that has not been presented to the House of Representatives, so they would have to take it up over there. It would, of course, be modified and come back. In other words, it is what I say--it is the DC two-step--or if you want to have a headline that says ``I am for banning insider trading'' knowing nothing will actually happen.
Now, maybe you don't think that the bill that my colleague from Nebraska worked diligently on is perfect, but it is a massive step in the right direction. This would get us to 99.9 percent of the way there on banning insider trading. It could happen tomorrow. It could happen tomorrow. And the voter ID law, which virtually all Americans support, could happen tomorrow.
So what we are dealing with is one bill that can be signed into law that has been vetted, that has massive bipartisan support, versus a bill that, quite frankly, the person talking about it wasn't even on that committee, is not 100 percent sure what was in that bill, doesn't know the history of the bill. It wasn't a year ago; it was a few months ago.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source