Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) is calling the bluff. With the Senate set to leave Washington on Wednesday for five straight weeks of campaign events and fundraisers, Thune has teed up two floor votes on bills that House Republicans already passed — and that Senate Democrats are expected to kill with the 60-vote filibuster.
Both bills passed the House, one of them almost unanimously. According to the Washington Examiner, the Ratepayer Protection Act and the Stop Insider Trading Act will come up Wednesday. Neither is expected to become law.
The Ratepayer Protection Act is Republicans' answer to Democratic attacks on data centers and the energy price spikes consumers fear will follow their construction. Its guardrails are voluntary — which Senate Democrats say is the whole problem — but the bill is aimed at blocking those energy hikes before they hit household budgets.
The Stop Insider Trading Act bans members of Congress and their spouses from buying stocks. It lands on the floor at a moment when a record number of voters tell pollsters government corruption is "widespread," and that they trust Democrats more to handle it. The bill allows members to keep their current portfolios, leaves executive branch officials untouched, and carries voter ID language borrowed from the SAVE America Act. Only 13 House Democrats voted for it earlier this year.
Thune did not pretend the votes were anything other than what they are.
"Both pieces of legislation strike at the very heart of issues that the American people care deeply about, passionately about, and we'll see if the Democrats are willing to take 'yes' for an answer," Thune said Tuesday.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) had his answer ready. He called the data center bill a "toothless messaging bill" and said the stock trading measure was "built to fail" because of its voter ID provision.
That is a striking defense. The voter ID language comes from the SAVE America Act — a bill requiring documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote. Polling has long shown broad public support for voter ID, including among significant numbers of Democrats. Schumer's position is that attaching it to a congressional stock trading ban is reason enough to sink the whole thing.
The two issues on the floor — affordability and corruption — are the same two issues dominating midterm races across the country. Republicans want their candidates talking about them for the next five weeks. Wednesday's votes give them the material: a recorded Senate roll call showing where every Democrat stands on energy costs and on lawmakers trading stocks.
Democrats know it. That is why the bills are being blocked rather than amended, and why the opposition is being framed as procedure rather than substance.
The Examiner reported that Thune and Senate Republican Conference Chairman John Barrasso are heading into a slate of battleground and red states in the final weeks before November, per POLITICO. The doomed votes are the opening message.
Also worth noting: The Guardian published a column Tuesday by David Walbert arguing that Senate Democrats could refuse to seat Republicans after the midterms by using Congress's Article I authority as judge of its own members' elections — the same framework Trump allies floated to challenge the 2020 results. That column is opinion, not reporting, and is being pushed by a Guardian contributor, not any Democratic officeholder. No sitting senator has endorsed it. But it is the kind of talk that surfaces when the other side expects to lose a message fight.
Wednesday's votes will not change any law. They will put every senator on the record — and both parties know exactly what that record is worth in November.
Our Take
This is how the Senate works when the adults are in charge. Thune put two popular bills on the floor and told Democrats to vote. If Democrats kill them, every Republican challenger in the country gets a ready-made ad: your senator voted against stopping members of Congress from trading stocks, and voted against protecting your power bill.
Schumer knows it. His complaints about a "toothless" data center bill and a "built to fail" stock trading ban are not arguments against the policies. They are excuses for voting no. And the excuse about voter ID is the weakest of all — attaching proof-of-citizenship language to a corruption bill is not sabotage, it is good policy. Schumer just doesn't want to vote for either half.
Here's the part that ought to make patriots furious. The Ratepayer Protection Act deals with data centers — the physical backbone of the AI boom, and the reason utility bills are threatening to spike from Virginia to Ohio. Republicans tried to get ahead of it. Democrats would rather run against the problem than fix it.
And the stock trading bill? Congress has been trading on inside information for years while telling you the system is clean. The House passed the ban with 13 Democrats on board. The Senate is about to kill it. Remember that in November.
Patriots, Wednesday's roll call is a gift. Watch the vote. See who stands with the people and who stands with the swamp.
