For years, lawmakers have tried and failed to ban their fellow members of Congress from owning or trading individual stocks. But with a new administration, and an even narrower Republican majority in the House, lawmakers across the political spectrum see an opportunity to get a stock-trading ban passed in the coming year.
Democratic Rep. Seth Magaziner and Republican Rep. Chip Roy reintroduced a resolution on Tuesday that would require members of Congress, their spouses and dependents to put assets in a qualified blind trust while in office to prevent insider trading. Another bipartisan initiative — led by Republican Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Cory Mills and Democratic Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Raja Krishnamoorthi — would prohibit the same group from owning or trading individual stocks.
“There’s no question that people have access to information here that the public doesn’t, that’s why there’s whole markets out there that track members’ trading habits,” Fitzpatrick told NOTUS. “That in and of itself should be a reason to address this, and I think it should have been addressed a long time ago.”
Previous attempts to prevent insider trading have been only somewhat successful. The STOCK Act, passed in 2012, required members of Congress to file public reports when they traded stocks. But one in seven members of Congress violated the law in the 117th Congress alone, and at least 97 members of Congress bought or sold stocks and other financial assets that intersected with their congressional work between 2019 and 2021.
“The STOCK Act was an important first step by making congressional stock trading transparent, but transparency is not enough,” Magaziner said. “We need to ban congressional stock trading so that members of Congress are not trading off of inside information.”
Forty-six percent of members of Congress own stock, and an additional 48% only own widely held investment funds like mutual funds and pensions, according to financial disclosure data compiled by the Campaign Legal Center.
Just 5% of lawmakers don’t own any stocks or investment funds — including Speaker Mike Johnson, according to his financial disclosure from last year.
Still, even if lawmakers see room for hope under a new Congress and the Trump administration, stock-trading bans have been one of those pieces of legislation that political leaders and lawmakers agree with but never seem to get done.
President Joe Biden endorsed a ban on congressional stock trading in his final weeks in office — a move advocates viewed as too little, too late. But Trump said he wants a ban on members of Congress “getting rich by trading stocks on insider information” when announcing his presidential bid in 2022.
The House Freedom Caucus has also put pressure on Speaker Johnson to bring a stock-trading ban to the floor.
Immediately after Johnson was chosen as speaker this month, Freedom Caucus leaders published a letter of legislative demands. Alongside a deficit reduction, fully securing the border and rolling back Biden’s energy subsidies, the group demanded an end to stock trading for congressional lawmakers.
“It’ll come up sometime in this new Congress, hopefully this first year,” Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Harris told NOTUS. “But right now we’re too busy focusing on fiscal issues.”
Magaziner said the timing is right now compared to the 118th, arguing that a thin House majority and new administration will pressure Johnson to act.
“The incoming administration, President Trump, has spoken favorably on this issue,” Magaziner said.
“With a slim majority in the House, Speaker Johnson and the Republican leadership have to listen to their members, and they have to be a democratic, bottom-up leadership,” he said.
“Similarly on the Democratic side, Hakeem Jeffries and our Democratic leadership also are very member driven, and so if support among ranking members for this bill continues to grow, as I believe it will, I think the leadership on both sides will have to listen,” he added.
If Johnson doesn’t bring it forward, Magaziner and Roy said they’re open to exploring other options to force action.
“If Republicans don’t get off the freaking mark, then we’ll need to start taking steps to figure out how to get it moving, because it needs to move,” Roy said. “We need to do it, and we need to do it this year. I’m tired of waiting.”
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Katherine Swartz is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.