Bill That Would Ban Members Of Congress From Trading Stocks Shut Down By Democrats

On Tuesday, bipartisan legislation that would prevent members of Congress, the president, vice president, senior executive branch officials, and all of their relatives from being able to trade stocks was shot down by Democrats in the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee.

The bill, S.2463, which has been informally named the ‘Ban Stock Trading for Government Officials Act’ was put forth by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and co-sponsored by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO). The name listed on the congressional website is “A bill to amend chapter 131 of title 5, United States Code, and the STOCK Act to require certain senior officials to report payments received from the Federal Government, to improve the filing and disclosure of financial disclosures, to ban stock ownership for certain senior Government officials, and for other purposes.”

The bill intends to build on the STOCK Act which originally aimed to fight against insider trading going on within Congress. The new bill would outright ban trading and not provide any exemption for trading in blind trusts. It would also have varying levels of penalties against members of Congress and executive branch officials, per Reuters. 

The bill would also require officials to file reports whenever a grant, loan, contract, or other payments are received, only having exceptions for salary compensation and tax refunds. It also aimed to increase the penalty in the STOCK Act for not filing transaction reports from $200 to $500. 

The bill was introduced on Tuesday and it was immediately referred to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee. The bill was shot down in the committee by a 12-9 margin. In the vote, ten of the votes against the measure were Democrat with only two against the bill being Republicans.

For support of the bill, eight of the nine that voted yes on the bill were Republican with Senator Jon Ossoff (D-GA) being the lone Democrat that voted in favor of the bill. 

The bill shows the classic double standard put forth by members of Congress that have no actual intent of ensuring that corruption ends within its chamber. The swamp runs deep, so much so that no matter who leads the charge to clean it up, any attempt simply gets lost in the murky waters of Washington D.C.