The House narrowly handed a bill to add new restrictions on lawmakers buying and selling shares after a partisan dispute resulted in a narrower proposal that stops wanting an outright ban.
The bill handed 232 to 198 on Wednesday, with solely 13 Democrats becoming a member of Republicans in assist. It is unclear when or if it shall be taken up within the Senate.
The measure prevents lawmakers, their spouses, and dependent kids from shopping for new shares of publicly traded firms whereas serving in Congress, which provides a brand new restriction on a extremely controversial apply.
Under the laws, lawmakers can nonetheless purchase personal shares, maintain shares they already owned prior to getting into Congress and preserve sure funding funds. Selling stock would require a seven-to-14-day advance discover. If the brand new guidelines are violated, the lawmaker would have to pay a payment of $2,000 or 10% of the worth of the transaction, whichever is bigger, and forfeit the revenue from the commerce.
In the times main up to the vote, a separate voter ID measure that might additionally add new restrictions on mail-in voting was added to the bill, additional complicating the push to move the bill.
While the bill – led by Bryan Steil, the GOP chairman of the House Administration Committee – provides extra constraints on lawmaker stock buying and selling than what exists beneath the present legislation, most Democrats opposed it, saying it didn’t go far sufficient to finish the apply and so they disapproved of the Republican choice to connect modifications to voting measures to the laws.
“House Republicans are pushing (a) voter suppression bill that will upend mail-in-voting and throw the elections into chaos, and are trying to trick members into supporting it by linking it to a partial stock trading ban that falls short of the full Congressional stock trading ban that the American people want,” Democratic Rep. Seth Magaziner, who co-led a bipartisan bill to ban stock buying and selling that has stalled, informed NCS.
Steil stated on Monday that the laws “is critical to restoring public trust in this institution.”
“I believe it is time we just stop allowing members to buy new stock. Doing so removes the appearance of impropriety altogether. Americans should be confident that lawmakers are working for them, not for their stock portfolios.”
GOP Rep. Chip Roy, who has for years pushed for a ban on lawmaker stock buying and selling, referred to as Wednesday’s vote “a major step toward holding members accountable and restoring trust in government.”
“For too long, Americans have watched politicians enrich themselves while asking the public to trust them. That has to end. I’ve fought since my first term in Congress to ban congressional stock trading because serving in Congress should never be a path to personal profit,” Roy stated.
The query of whether or not lawmakers ought to be allowed to commerce shares has sparked contentious debate within the halls of Congress for years.
At one level final yr, there was a glimmer of hope that completely banning lawmaker stock buying and selling in its entirety would change into legislation with sturdy bipartisan assist.
A bipartisan bill was launched in September 2025 and in December 2025, GOP Rep. Anna Paulina Luna tried to circumvent House GOP management to convey a bill banning lawmaker stock buying and selling to the ground.
Initial assist for the objective of limiting lawmaker stock buying and selling from President Donald Trump, House Speaker Mike Johnson and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries additionally generated contemporary momentum. Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley even voted with Democrats in July 2025 to advance a bill to ban lawmakers from stock buying and selling, over the opposition of different Republicans on the panel and drawing the ire of Trump about whether or not the ban ought to embrace the manager department.
But then proposals began to diverge and talks started to stall. Some Democrats pushed to develop the hassle to embrace banning the president, vice chairman and their spouses from buying and selling shares as nicely, shedding Republican assist within the course of.
Lawmaker stock buying and selling has not been reformed for the reason that STOCK Act was handed in 2012. That bill created necessities for lawmakers to disclose their stock trades but has completed little to curb the apply.
Polls have constantly discovered widespread assist for banning members of Congress from buying and selling shares. The concern has acquired nationwide consideration and alarmed nonpartisan ethics consultants about whether or not lawmakers are utilizing their positions of energy for private enrichment.
NCS has reported on situations the place senator stock purchases or gross sales concerned firms in industries overseen by the committees they serve on in addition to how lawmaker stock buying and selling spiked within the days round President Donald Trump’s commerce battle bulletins.
Under present legislation, lawmakers, their spouses, and kids are permitted to make trades, but they’re mandated to report any exercise completed on their behalf inside 45 days. They are solely required to disclose a financial worth vary for trades.
Ahead of the vote, GOP Rep. Thomas Massie stated he would assist the laws but supplied a warning.
“I don’t think it’s going to solve problems up here, but I’ll vote for it,” Massie stated Tuesday.