On Wednesday the House passed the Stop Insider Trading Act, 232–198, with thirteen Democrats joining Republicans. It is the first congressional stock trading ban ever to reach a House floor vote.
That is a real milestone. I am not going to wave it away.
Now look at what is in it.
What the bill does
H.R. 7008 bars members of Congress, their spouses and their dependent children from buying individual stocks.
It does not require anyone to sell what they already hold.
Members may keep selling, provided they file public notice with the clerk seven to fourteen days ahead. The penalty is two thousand dollars or ten percent of the transaction, whichever is greater, plus forfeiture of realized gains.
And it does not touch the President.
What the members said about it
Jim McGovern's objection was crude and correct. “Correcting the Record: your shitty, watered-down bill is a bandaid on a bullet hole. It does NOT ban stock trading. It bans Members of Congress from BUYING stocks but not SELLING them. Nice loophole.”
Chip Roy, who wanted mandatory divestiture, conceded a different way: “I had legislation that would have required divestiture. I preferred that approach. But you got to build a coalition in a body.”
Joe Morelle called it a sham on the floor.
Norma Torres tried back in January to strike the language letting members keep existing holdings and reinvest the dividends. Dividend reinvestment is stock buying with extra steps.
Then there is the rider
House Republicans attached voter ID provisions drawn from the SAVE America Act to a stock trading bill.
Thomas Massie — a Republican — put the motive on the record: the provision was not added to win Democratic votes for voter ID. It was added to get them to vote against the stock ban, so it could be used against them in November.
The White House then posted that 198 Democrats had voted against banning congressional stock trading. That post was community-noted for omitting the rider. Bill Ackman amplified a version of it and deleted his.
Both parties earned this
Democrats had a serious bipartisan vehicle available. The Restore Trust in Congress Act — negotiated for months by Roy, Magaziner, Ocasio-Cortez, Burchett, Jayapal and Luna — required actual divestiture, with tax deferral if the proceeds went into a mutual fund. It never got a floor vote. Republicans controlled that.
But Democrats held majorities of their own for years and never delivered a ban either. Voting against this one, however justified by the rider, hands the other side a clean thirty-second ad.
The part nobody wants said
The STOCK Act has been law for thirteen years. It bars trading on nonpublic information and requires disclosure of trades over a thousand dollars within forty-five days.
Not one member of Congress has ever been prosecuted under it. Not one, despite documented violations.
The problem was never that the rule did not exist. The problem is that the body writing the rule is the body the rule governs, and it has consistently declined to build enforcement it might one day face.
A clean bill would pass tomorrow if leadership in either chamber wanted it to.
Americans are not confused about this. They are watching the people who set the rules trade in the markets those rules move.
That is not reform. It is a receipt.
Add your perspective
The strongest case against me from the Right: half a loaf beats nothing, and Roy is correct that you legislate with the coalition you have. From the Left: the rider proves the bill was never meant to become law, and voting no was the only honest option. Center if you think the real fix is prosecuting under the STOCK Act that already exists.
