January 1, Democrat Calls for New House Leadership Over “Conflicts of Interest”

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1988: Mikhail Gorbachev becomes Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, effectively head of state of the Soviet Union.

Democratic Rep. Abigail Spanberger (VA) penned a scathing letter condemning top House Democrats for doing away with plans to vote on legislation to ban lawmaker stock trading. The two-term congresswoman called for new Democratic leadership on Capitol Hill.

“This moment marks a failure of House leadership — and it’s yet another example of why I believe that the Democratic Party needs new leaders in the halls of Capitol Hill, as I have long made known,” Spanberger said.

“Rather than bring Members of Congress together who are passionate about this issue, leadership chose to ignore these voices, push them aside, and look for new ways they could string the media and the public along — and evade public criticism.”

House lawmakers leave Washington, D.C., on Friday and are not scheduled to return until after the midterm elections.

On Thursday, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) said the stock trade ban would not be put up for a vote this week because lawmakers did not have enough time to review it. Hoyer is reportedly opposed to the stock ban.

Spanberger alleged that House leadership implemented “repeated delay tactics.”

“For months, momentum grew in both the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate to finally take a step towards prohibiting Members of Congress from day trading while on the job. We saw remarkable progress towards rectifying glaring examples of conflicts of interest. And after first signaling her opposition to these reforms, the Speaker purportedly reversed her position. However, our bipartisan reform coalition was then subjected to repeated delay tactics, hand-waving gestures, and blatant instances of Lucy pulling the football,” she said.

“As part of their diversionary tactics, the House Administration Committee was tasked with creating a new piece of legislation — and they ultimately introduced a kitchen-sink package that they knew would immediately crash upon arrival, with only days remaining before the end of the legislative session and no time to fix it,” Spanberger said.

“It’s apparent that House leadership does not have its heart in this effort, because the package released earlier this week was designed to fail. It was written to create confusion surrounding reform efforts and complicate a straightforward reform priority — banning Members of Congress from buying and selling individual stocks — all while creating the appearance that House Leadership wanted to take action.”

The Virginia Democrat said she “look[s] forward to working with both my Democratic and Republican colleagues to get these reforms done.”

Source: The Hill