Americans may disagree on plenty, but there is broad support for one idea: members of Congress should not profit from stock trades while making laws that can affect those investments.
The failure to pass a congressional stock-trading ban reflects a wider frustration with corruption in Washington. A CNBC poll found that 36% of voters consider corruption the country’s most pressing problem, putting it ahead of everyday costs such as groceries and fuel.
Even after high-profile fraud cases involving taxpayer money in Minnesota, California and New York, Democrats hold a four-point advantage over Republicans on which party voters trust more to address political corruption, the poll found. At the same time, 93% of respondents said the president and members of Congress should not own or trade shares in companies with federal contracts. Another 89% said companies owned by a sitting president’s immediate family should not be awarded federal contracts.
Those positions seem fairly straightforward. Yet on Sept. 30, Senate Democrats voted against the Stop Insider Trading Act, which had passed the House with Democratic support. The bill would have prohibited lawmakers, their spouses and dependent children from buying new shares in public companies while the lawmaker was in office. It also would have required advance public notice before existing holdings could be sold.
Every Senate Democrat voted no.
Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, argued that Republicans had designed the bill to fail by adding what he called “poison pills.” He also said the proposal was too weak. Democrats objected in particular to a provision requiring voters to show identification at the polls, a measure supported by a large majority of Americans and required in many other developed countries.
Schumer’s claim that the bill did not go far enough is harder to reconcile with the party’s record. A partial reform, if enacted, would be more than a more ambitious proposal that never becomes law. Democrats controlled the Senate for years without passing the broader ban they now say they want.
The vote has also revived scrutiny of trades made by members of Nancy Pelosi’s household. On July 1, 2024, the household sold 2,000 Visa shares valued at between $500,000 and $1 million. Less than three months later, the Biden Justice Department filed an antitrust lawsuit against Visa, after which the company’s stock fell.
Attorney Michael Caputo, a longtime Trump adviser, said legal analysts had questioned the case and argued that, whatever its eventual outcome, the lawsuit’s clearest effect so far was sparing a well-connected investor losses experienced by other Visa shareholders.
The Visa sale was not the first trade by Pelosi’s husband, Paul, to draw attention. In 2022, he bought more than $1 million in Nvidia call options weeks before Congress voted on major subsidies for the chip industry. He sold the options after the trades became public.
Concerns about lawmakers using their positions for personal gain are hardly new. Around the turn of the 20th century, New York political boss George Washington Plunkitt described “honest graft” as spotting an opportunity and taking it.
Today, websites and trading platforms such as PelosiTracker, Quiver Quantitative and Unusual Whales track or imitate Pelosi’s portfolio. The article notes that her portfolio gained more than twice as much as the S&P 500 in 2024.
Voters are asking lawmakers to stop trading in the same arena they regulate. Republicans brought forward a bill intended to address that concern, but Senate Democrats blocked it.
The Senate will not return until after the election. When lawmakers come back for the lame-duck session, they should consider taking up the bill again before the year ends. Democrats would still have a chance to change course on this issue.
