Senate Democrats on Wednesday blocked legislation that would limit the ability of members of Congress to trade stock, dismissing it as an empty G.O.P. effort to appeal to widespread voter distrust of public officials ahead of the November elections without actually addressing it.
The Stop Insider Trading Act, which the House passed in July, would bar lawmakers from buying individual stocks but allow members of Congress who already own them to keep trading with new notice requirements.It would allow spouses and other family members trade freely on behalf of a lawmaker and would not apply to the president or the vice president.
The measure, which needed 60 votes to pass, was blocked on a party-line vote of 53 to 47, its failure predetermined after Republicans attached sweeping voter ID restrictions opposed by Democrats and some G.O.P. lawmakers that have already been rejected by the Senate six times.
But Democrats said they would have opposed the bill even without the voter ID measure, because it fails to do what voters have been clamoring for: impose an outright ban on congressional stock trading. They accused Republicans of bringing it up in an effort to appear as if they were addressing the issue, which has become politically toxic for both parties.
Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, called it a “toothless” bill that was as “ineffective as a screen door on a submarine.” He noted that it would do nothing to stop President Trump, who he said has made 30,000 stock trades in the past year, from continuing such transactions.
Mr. Schumer called the bill a “last-ditch effort to save face” with voters, but said that “Americans don’t buy it.”
The Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan legal organization, also urged Congress to reject the measure because it “does not actually ban congressional stock trading, and it will thus not remove the cloud of distrust that hangs over lawmakers’ suspicious stock sales.”
The bill was brought to the floor as part of a final sprint of legislative moves before the midterm elections by Senate Republicans. They are facing a bleak political landscape with just weeks to go before the balloting, aimed at showing they were responsive to voters’ concerns.
“It would ensure transparency when it comes to stock sales to provide that members of Congress and their families provide public notice of any stock sale,” Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota and the majority leader, said on the Senate floor. He called it a “simple” but important way “to ensure that members of Congress are held to the standards that Americans should be able to expect of their representatives.”
Senator Pete Ricketts, Republican of Nebraska, said passage was necessary to “restore the faith of the American people in the House and in the Senate.”
For House Republicans who voted for an identical measure earlier this year, the bill has provided them with a talking point to appeal to voters on the issue.
In Iowa, for example, an outside group supporting Representative Zach Nunn, a vulnerable Republican, has spent almost $400,000 on an ad highlighting his support for the bill, exaggerating what it does.
“While honest, hard-working Americans struggle at home, fat cat politicians in Washington are getting rich on inside information,” the ad states. Mr. Nunn’s support for the bill, it claims inaccurately, means that “those fat cat lawmakers and their families are prohibited from buying stocks, putting an end to their greed and corruption, and leveling the playing field for hard-working Americans.”
A public backlash against perceived corruption in Washington has shaped the battle for control of Congress, with Democrats and Republicans alike seizing on congressional stock trading and putting it at the forefront of ads in some of the most competitive races in the country.
Candidates in both parties have cited congressional stock trading as a way to portray their opponents as corrupt and out of touch with the financial realities of working-class Americans.
Roughly a quarter of legislators on Capitol Hill have traded individual stocks during this congressional session, with some buying and selling millions of dollars in shares. Since the start of this term in January 2025, members and their families have collectively traded $160 million to $664 million in individual stocks, according to a New York Times analysis of data collected from members’ required financial filings by 2iQ Research, an analytics firm.
This year, candidates and outside groups have spent an estimated $162 million on advertisements highlighting the issue, according to an analysis by AdImpact.
In competitive House districts, Republicans are targeting Democrats on the issue with television ads in Florida, Virginia, Texas and Ohio.
And Democratic candidates in some of the most competitive Senate races in the country, where they are hoping to flip seats, have all zeroed in on the topic as they make their appeals to voters.
In Alaska, former Representative Mary Peltola, the Democratic nominee, has been campaigning on a ban, attacking Senator Dan Sullivan, the Republican incumbent, for being one of the most prolific stock traders in Congress.
“He’s ballooned his net worth, reporting nearly 100 stock trades while serving in office,” she said at an event in July.
In North Carolina, the Democratic Senate nominee, former Gov. Roy Cooper, has said that the first thing he would support in Congress would be a stock trading ban. He also challenged his Republican opponent, Michael Whatley, to sell his stock.
In Iowa, State Representative Josh Turek, the Democratic nominee for Senate, has been attacking Representative Ashley Hinson, the Republican nominee, in paid advertisements for increasing her net worth up to $8 million since she went to Congress. (Ms. Hinson, in paid ads, also says that she is “fighting to ban stock trading in Congress.”)
And in Ohio, former Senator Sherrod Brown, a Democrat, tells voters in an ad that “last year, members of Congress made more than $635 million in stock trades.” He adds: “The fact is, we’ve come to expect that kind of thing from Washington. But you shouldn’t, and I never will.”
Senate Democrats have made their own attempts at addressing the issue, all of which have been blocked by Republicans. In June, Senator Jon Ossoff, Democrat of Georgia, sought to bar senators from trading stocks and cryptocurrency.
“This may be one of the most unifying issues in our deeply divided country,” he said at the time. A Republican, Senator Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, objected.
In July, Senator Alex Padilla, Democrat of California, tried twice to offer a bipartisan bill that would bar members of Congress and their family members, as well as the president and vice president, from trading stocks.
Republicans moved to block it both times.
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