‘This Is a Fist Fight’: Lawmakers Pursue Stock-Ban Bill as Pressure on Leadership Grows

Banning members of Congress and their families from trading individual stocks is one of the few issues many Republicans and Democrats agree on.

But passing a stock-ban bill into law won’t be so simple.

While there is a vocal coalition of lawmakers that believe trading stocks undermines Americans’ trust in Congress for members with inside information, others bristle at banning one way lawmakers — whose salaries have been frozen since 2009 — can make money.

A House Administration Committee hearing Wednesday laid bare this divide — while also highlighting how rank-and-file Democrats and Republicans alike are pressuring GOP leadership to bring a robust, bipartisan stock-ban bill to the House floor.

At a press conference ahead of the hearing, Republican Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee told NOTUS that House Speaker Mike Johnson has promised that a leading stock-ban bill, which combined several earlier iterations and was introduced in September, would get a markup.

Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida said earlier this month Johnson had promised the bill would get a markup. She told Politico on Tuesday that she expects leaders to announce a markup Wednesday, and if they don’t, she’ll file a discharge petition, which she has repeatedly promised to do in order to force a vote on the bill.

But Luna lashed out on social media after the hearing, which she said was “for show.”

“We got news that they are marking up and bring to the floor a water down version with no teeth. Unacceptable,” Luna, who did not attend the hearing in person, wrote on X.

When reached for comment, Johnson’s office said in an email that it “will defer to House Admin regarding their markup schedule.”

Republican Rep. Bryan Steil of Wisconsin, the chair of the House Administration Committee, said during the stock hearing that his goal is “to ensure no lawmaker is profiting from insider information while serving in the United States Congress.”

Steil owns at least $68,000 worth of publicly traded stocks, including shares of Caterpillar, Ford and other companies, according to his most recent financial disclosure filed in May.

Ranking Member Joe Morelle, a Democrat from New York who does not own publicly traded stocks, according to his most recent financial disclosure, said existing “reforms are now just Band-Aids.”

“In this moment, confidence in our government is abysmally low,” Morelle said. “Fostering public trust in our institutions is the absolute bedrock of the American experiment. It is what gives our government legitimacy. But that trust must be earned and kept, by holding ourselves to the highest standard of conduct possible.”

Insider trading is already illegal, and members of Congress are required to publicly disclose annual financial disclosures and individual stock trades under the existing Stop Trading on Congressional Act of 2012. But penalties are notoriously low, with first-time violators facing a $200 fine that may be waived at the discretion of House and Senate ethics committees.

Just this year, numerous members of Congress — Democrats and Republicans alike — have violated the STOCK Act’s transparency provisions with late disclosures that are sometimes tardy by months or even years.

They include fellow Republicans Sen. Markwayne Mullin and Reps. Dan Meuser, Lisa McClain, Austin Scott, Neal Dunn, Scott Franklin, Brandon Gill, Hal Rogers, Tim Moore, Troy Nehls, Rich McCormick and Sheri Biggs.

STOCK Act violators among Democrats include Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Dwight Evans, Jamie Raskin, Chellie Pingree, Shri Thanedar, George Whitesides, Ritchie Torres, Jonathan Jackson, Donald Norcross, Tom Suozzi, George Latimer, Val Hoyle, Jared Huffman and Pat Ryan.

Dozens of other lawmakers have violated the STOCK Act in recent years. The STOCK Act has tripped up congressional candidates, too, including Robert White, a leading candidate challenging long-time non-voting Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton of Washington, D.C.

And in October, NOTUS reported that Rep. Cleo Fields, a Louisiana Democrat, purchased up to $200,000 worth of Oracle stock in the hours and days before Trump revealed that the tech company would play a central role in a deal to spin off TikTok from its Chinese parent company.

In addition to Morelle, several members of the committee that conducted Wednesday’s stock hearing don’t own publicly traded stock, including Democratic Rep. Norma Torres and Republican Reps. Barry Loudermilk, Morgan Griffith, Greg Murphy, Stephanie Bice, Mike Carey and Mary Miller.

Griffith does own private stock, however — at a swimming pool in his hometown of Salem, Virginia. He asked the expert witnesses invited to testify how to guard against wrongdoing without forcing him to divest from this swim club, which he is concerned might fold if he’s no longer an investor.

“How do we make sure that we’re not throwing out the baby with the bath water? Because I gotta tell you, this place is important to me,” Griffith said.

Under the bipartisan compromise lawmakers unveiled in September, members of Congress would be compelled to sell their individual stocks. But they would also be allowed to defer paying taxes from the sale if they reinvest in a mutual fund.

“This job is a temporary public service. Public service is supposed to be a sacrifice. You’re supposed to give things up as part of that public service, and this is the least we can do,” Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, a Republican who led bipartisan negotiations on the stock-ban bill, said at the pre-hearing press conference.

Democratic Rep. Seth Magaziner of Rhode Island, who led negotiations for Democrats, also emphasized the importance of avoiding even the appearance of a conflict of interest.

“Members of Congress have access to all kinds of inside information that the average member of the public does not, so the opportunity for corruption is unacceptable,” Magaziner said.

Meanwhile, across Capitol Hill, a Senate committee passed its own stock-ban bill this summer — the Halting Ownership and Non-Ethical Stock Transactions (HONEST) Act.

Unlike the House version, it would require the president and vice president to divest of individual stock assets. Notably, that requirement wouldn’t kick in until “the beginning of their next term in office,” so it would not apply to President Donald Trump or Vice President JD Vance.

Morelle agreed a stock-trade ban law should also extend to “co-equal branches of government.”

But the co-sponsors of the House bill previously said they left it out of the bipartisan compromise because they were trying to get to a compromise everyone could agree to advance, although they were open to adding that ban during the amendment process. They also expressed confidence that the bill would get a vote this Congress.

Nevertheless, Burchett was pessimistic about the chances of actually passing a stock ban.

“This is a fist fight, folks,” he said.

“This is a scam that’s being played on the American public, and it needs to stop,” Burchett added, referring to lawmakers trading stocks. “Let’s quit with this nonsense. Let’s give America a reason to trust Congress for once in our miserable lives.”