Long-awaited legislation banning members of Congress from being able to trade individual stocks is ready to come to a vote as soon as this month, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) said in her weekly news briefing on Wednesday.
Lawmakers have been discussing the legislation for months and made some revelations on Wednesday morning, Pelosi said. “We believe we have a product that we can bring to the floor this month,” she said, which she characterized as “exciting.”
It’s unclear what’s in the bill or how much support it will have from Congress, though the general idea does appear to have unusual bipartisan support. In the past year or so, lawmakers have introduced a wide variety of bills on the topic, all containing some form of a ban.
A ban on stock trading could go far in preventing corruption in Congress, with advocates hoping that it will help to prevent lawmakers from directly profiting from legislative decisions. Though there are regulations aimed at preventing stock-related conflicts of interest and increasing financial transparency for Congress members, such laws are often unevenly enforced or are weak enough that they still erode public trust in lawmakers.
The bills range in their scope. Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D-Massachusetts) suggested last year that lawmakers should ban not just members of Congress but also other top federal officials from the practice, though the current legislation will likely focus solely on members of Congress and, potentially, members of their families.
The bills also differ in their enforcement mechanisms. The bill proposed by Senators Jon Ossoff (D-Georgia) and Mark Kelly (D-Arizona) would require members and their immediate families to put individual stocks into a blind trust while they’re in office, while another bill introduced this year by Warren and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Washington) would require members and their spouses to divest all individual stocks.
Violators of the Warren/Jayapal law would face a hefty $50,000 fine for each infraction, while Ossoff and Kelly’s bill would impose a fine equal to one years’ salary, which is $174,000 for members and slightly more for minority and majority leaders. Other bills, like the one introduced by far right Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri), would require members to return profits made from trades to the Treasury department, which could be greater or less than the penalties under the other two bills previously mentioned.
Pelosi discussed the status of the legislation in response to a question from a reporter about a recent explosive New York Times report, which found that in recent years, nearly a fifth of Congress members have made a stock transaction involving a company in an industry overseen by committees that they are a part of, raising serious ethics concerns.
The report found that 97 members of Congress or their families, from both sides of the aisle, made stock trades between 2019 and 2021 that could represent conflicts of interest – in the case of some members, dozens of potential conflicts.
The person with the most potential conflicts was conservative Democrat and industry friendly Rep. Josh Gottheimer (New Jersey), with 43 questionable trades. Many of these were in major banking and financial corporations, despite his seat on the House Financial Services Committee.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) renewed her call for a stock-trading ban in Congress on Tuesday after the release of the report.
“It’s long past time to ban members of Congress and their spouses from owning and trading individual stocks. Months ago, I introduced the only bipartisan bill in the Senate to get it done,” she wrote on Twitter. “Congress urgently needs strong reform here — no more delays.”
Indeed, lawmakers have been introducing stock bans since the beginning of this year, but the proposal has seen relatively little movement despite being vastly popular among the public. Lawmakers in favor of the ban have suggested that Pelosi could be part of the reason for the delay; in the spring, Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Virginia) said that she thinks Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) are “trying to run out the clock” on the proposal.
Pelosi, whose husband is an especially active stock trader, previously voiced her opposition to the proposal, but has now slightly changed course after facing backlash.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
Last week, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy