Eric Cantor and Harry Reid have made their insider trading bills a priority. Washington's focus? Washington

The economy is soft, the deficit is expected to top $1 trillion for the fourth straight year, and the debt threatens to crush the next generation.

Washington’s solution: Fix Washington first — or at least pretend to.


The political class is scrambling to side with an angry public against a beleaguered Congress. That goes not just for the president of the United States, but for both chambers and both parties on Capitol Hill.

This week, the Senate is voting on a bill — The STOCK Act — that would ban insider trading by members of Congress and their aides, even though lawmakers say the practice is already banned. The House is preparing its own version, and it’s also voting this week on freezing the pay of lawmakers and federal employees and cutting committee budgets. House Republicans will also bring bills to the floor this week that would reshape how the Congressional Budget Office does its accounting and makes economic forecasts. Earmarks, which have largely disappeared from legislation in recent years under bans in the House and Senate, are in the crosshairs of senators who haven’t found new outrages to demagogue during an election year.

Out of touch much?

House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), who represents thousands of federal workers, thinks so.

“None of these bills deal with jobs,” Hoyer said at his meeting with reporters Tuesday, speaking about the House Republican agenda this week. “We shouldn’t be surprised that Republicans are not dealing with jobs. From time to time they talk about it, but legislatively they’re not talking about it. In fact, this is an agenda which ignores jobs.”

At a time when there’s fierce competition between Wall Street and Capitol Hill for the title of most reviled institution in the nation, few lawmakers want to be seen trying to thwart the STOCK Act’s aim of preventing lawmakers and others involved in the Washington influence industry from using their knowledge to turn a buck. Only two senators, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and Richard Burr of North Carolina, dissented on a vote to move forward with the legislation on Monday.

But even the political leaders rushing to insist that Congress pass an insider-trading ban say that it’s more about perception than reality. It seems unlikely that an instant image makeover will reverse approval ratings that dipped into single digits late last year — especially if Congress can’t confront the real problems that face people who live outside the Capital Beltway, like joblessness and a weak economy.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) acknowledged during a Tuesday press conference that the House version of the STOCK Act is more about restoring faith in Congress than addressing actual insider trading in the halls of Congress.

“Certainly, I think that there is activity that exists that could be characterized in a negative light and lend itself to the public believing that their elected representatives are operating in a way that benefits themselves,” he said. “So if that’s the case, I think we need to make darn sure that people across this country know that members of Congress and others are not using information that they gained because of their position for personal gain. Again, that’s what I would say to the people who may say this is not a necessary vote.”

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s office circulated a one-page summary of his chamber’s version of the bill that contends that “it is not true that Congress has exempted itself from insider trading laws” and notes that the measure “makes it clear that members of Congress and congressional staff are not exempt.”

So why bring up the bill?

Because, according to Reid’s handout, “some legal experts have questioned whether an insider trading case could be successfully brought against a member” because they believe lawmakers don’t have an explicit duty to the American public that mirrors the duty that corporate executives have to shareholders.

Even if that’s true, no one seriously suggests that an insider-trading ban has anything to do with job-creation, which lawmakers universally identify as their top agenda item.

Sen. Mark Begich (D-Alaska) told POLITICO that the Senate can walk and chew gum at the same time.

“We’re busy on other fronts,” he said when asked whether there’s a relationship between the STOCK Act and job-creation. “This is what you all see right now, but the committees are working. Jobs is the No. 1 issue and that’s what we’re working on.”

Begich noted that the Senate is preparing to take up aviation and highway bills soon, and House Republicans are putting together their own transportation measure. Plus, House Republicans are trying to push through a bill to jump-start construction on the Keystone XL pipeline, and they also vow to cut back on regulation in the coming weeks.

The federal pay freeze and restrictions on food stamps that the House will pass Wednesday are bills that they hope will act as offsetting measures for the payroll tax holiday that’s set to expire in February.

Still, the hard truth is this: Congress has long since given up on finding common ground on the economic issues that are at the forefront of voters’ minds and which most divide the parties. But lawmakers have to do something — especially with the president breathing down their necks — and the easiest way to find common ground is to take up a hot political issue that doesn’t have a partisan cast, such as the STOCK act or compensation for members of Congress.

It’s not yet clear that the STOCK Act will make it through the Senate, as there are pending amendments that could make the final version less appealing than the one that cleared a procedural vote. And Cantor, who has become the face of House Republican support for the bill after dressing down Financial Services Chairman Spencer Bachus last year for scheduling a committee vote without running all the necessary traps, said Tuesday that he will take up a different version if the Senate doesn’t amend its bill to include executive branch officials.

“[T]he bill does not adequately cover those connected with the federal government in the Executive Branch - that are in positions with access and are privy to information that could be used to personally benefit those individuals,” Cantor said. “We are looking at ways that hopefully the Senate can work on that language and strengthen the language so the same rules apply to the Executive Branch personnel that have access to that type of information.”

The White House, for its part, isn’t exactly breaking new ground with Congress on the jobs front: Obama asked lawmakers to pass a series of small business bills that the House has, at least in some form, already acted on.