Years in the making, legislation that would ban stock trading by members of Congress has passed out of the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. The bill has real bipartisan support from co-sponsors Senators Gary Peters (D-MI) – chairman of the committee, Josh Hawley (R-MO), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Jacky Rosen (D-NV) and Georgia’s own Jon Ossoff.
“This is a historic moment in efforts to reform the ethics laws that govern Congress. Georgians overwhelmingly agree that Members of Congress should not be playing the stock market while we legislate and while we have access to confidential and privileged information,” Ossoff said. “This is long overdue and necessary, and today we made historic progress passing my bipartisan bill out of Committee.”
Having the full support of the chairman of the committee almost certainly helped its move through committee. “Americans deserve to be confident that their federal elected officials are making decisions that are in the best interests of the public and not their own personal interest,” said Chairman Peters.
The bill now moves to the full Senate for consideration and a possible floor vote. If passed, the bill would immediately ban members of congress, the president and vice presidents from buying and selling stocks, including securities, commodities, futures and other types of funds. It would also require elected officials, and, notably, their spouses and dependent children to divest from these assets. There is not a blind trust allowance that would potentially offer a loophole from these divestment requirements.
“Members of Congress should not be here to turn a profit on the people’s time. They should certainly not be trading or owning individual stocks, especially not in companies they oversee through their government work. This bill takes a giant step forward to that end, and I’m proud that it has passed through Senator Peters’ committee,” said Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO).
Ossoff and Hawley have both been introducing bills every year to move this issue out of committee. It remains to be seen if the issue will come up before the full senate. Previous attempts have failed and a 2012 bill which did pass prohibited insider trading but has largely been seen as a failure with rare enforcement and penalties that could be pennies compared to the value of the stock trade. Those penalties are currently $200 per violation, about three shares of Coca-Cola.
One of the Senate’s wealthiest members, Mitt Romney from Utah, is skeptical about parts of the bill, particularly the divestment issue. Romney pointed out that under this bill Donald Trump would have to sell all his stock in Truth Social before becoming president. Romney said he would be fine with a bill banning stock trading, but this bill goes beyond that and seems unfeasible.
