The White House says every Senate Democrat voted against the “Stop Insider Trading Act”. The title left out what else was in the bill. Two words in capitals, one verb, one name. UNANIMOUSLY is accurate: every Democrat and both independents voted no. Its mirror is also accurate and goes unmentioned: every Republican voted yes. The capitals turn a count into a charge. AGAINST rides on a verb that suggests a vote on the bill itself. Roll Call reports a motion to invoke cloture on proceeding, a vote to begin debate, that fell 53 to 47, seven short of 60. The name does the rest. Called the Stop Insider Trading Act, the bill makes a no vote sound like a vote for insider trading. It bars members, spouses and dependent children from buying new individual stocks; it lets them keep and sell what they own and does not cover the President. It also requires photo ID to vote in federal elections. The headline leaves that out. The release reaches it in its final paragraph, as a “commonsense provision”. The other side reached for the same tools. Schumer’s words for the bill: “toothless”, “as ineffective as a screen door on a submarine”, “a permission slip for corruption”, and for the voter ID part, “a poison pill”. Each label is a verdict that arrives before the argument. With two measures in one bill, a headline waited either way: a no became a vote against stopping insider trading, a yes a vote to “gut mail voting”.
