Conflict is brewing within Republican Party ranks in Congress over a bill to ban members from engaging in individual stock trades, Politico reported on Wednesday.
A bill to ban individual stock trades has been pitched frequently by members on both sides for years, only to be stymied by members who rely on the practice for side income — often in allegedly unethical ways. Congress passed a bipartisan law in 2012 that sought to curb the problem by requiring members to disclose their stock sales, but ethics controversies have remained, and some reports have revealed large numbers of representatives don’t even follow the reporting rules.
Now, there is a fresh push by lawmakers on both sides to just ban the practice outright — and they are turning up the heat on GOP leaders who really don’t want the potential political blowback from doing it.
“‘A bill will come to the floor,’ Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) said at a press conference outside the House Administration Committee hearing room, where academics were preparing to testify about the ins and outs of current stock trade ethics enforcement,” reported Politico, with Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) and Seth Magaziner (D-RI) along with him in support.
Some staunch MAGA lawmakers have joined in, too: Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN), also at the press conference, told reporters, “This is a fist fight, folks,” and Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) is planning a discharge petition vote to force House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) to allow it to come to the floor.
However, per the report, “House GOP leaders are wary that a bipartisan bill or a similar measure will trigger blowback from a swath of Republicans, including some who say stock trading is an important source of income for themselves and their families.”
This was what killed the last effort that gained serious steam to ban congressional stock trading in 2022, when then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) — herself an avid stock trader — publicly supported the effort, but was accused by other members of slow-walking the bill to sabotage it.
Fitzpatrick, for his part, warned that this time around, hearings on the proposed ban will focus on just how heavily some members of Congress have abused stock trading to get rich in office. “Part of the fact finding is what members have done in terms of trading, sometimes on a daily basis,” he said.
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