Chip Roy And Allies Poised To Demand Vote On Congressional Stock-Owning Ban

As if Speaker Mike Johnson didn’t already have enough headaches awaiting him when he eventually reconvenes the House, Congressman Chip Roy and a bipartisan group of representatives are promising to push hard for a vote on a bill that would put an end to stock-trading by members of the federal legislature – who routinely have advance access to information that moves both individual securities and entire markets. 

“We’re going to have a vote on stock trading,” said Roy on Monday. “When we get back, we got to have a conference discussion about this, or we’re going to be moving forward.” Joined by Democrats Seth Magaziner and Pramila Jayapal, the Texas Republican Roy introduced the Restore Trust in Congress Act (HR 5106) on Sept 3 and they’ve quickly amassed 82 cosponsors. Though backers come from both sides of the aisle, Democrats have joined at a higher clip — there are 64 Democratic and 18 Republican cosponsors.  

The New York Times determined that, between 2019 and 2021, 18% of federal legislators traded stocks in industries that are within the scope of their particular committees. However, the Restore Trust in Congress Act’s sweeping scope goes far beyond that dynamic, banning members of Congress, their spouses, dependent children and trustees from owning, buying, or selling individual stocks, securities, commodities, futures, and other comparable assets. Current members of Congress would have to unload any “covered investment” with 180 days, while new members would have to divest within 90 days after taking the oath of office. Legislators would be allowed to own diversified mutual funds, Treasury securities, municipal bonds and small businesses. 

To ease the sting of capital gains taxes, the measure allows legislators to defer capital gains by reinvesting sale proceeds in comparable investments like mutual funds. Still, the comprehensiveness of the ban could be its undoing altogether, or a compromise could bring the passage of a watered-down measure.  

The bill faces opposition by many Republicans, but other GOP members who back the bill told Politico that Johnson has assured them it will get his attention, with Roy saying the speaker is under increasing pressure. “I think there’s going to still be this sort of give and take about how serious some of us are on a real ban as opposed to just some soft limits,” Roy said. “So we’ve got to keep working on that.”

The most infamous example of a member of Congress growing rich on privileged information is current representative and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whose net worth skyrocketed from a mere $160,000 when she took office in 1987 to more than $140 million in 2024. In an epic troll move in April, Senator Josh Hawley introduced the “Preventing Elected Leaders from Owning Securities and Investments” Act — or PELOSI Act.  

Though Pelosi is a poster child of sorts, there are many other examples of legislators using their access to front-run the markets, from Rep Spencer Bachus betting on a market decline the day after a 2008 closed-door session with the Fed chairman and the Treasury secretary, to Sen. Dianne Feinstein attending a private session in late January 2020 on the looming Covid virus, and then making significant stock trades in February just before everything went to hell. In an even more jarring 2020 example, the wife of Democratic Rep. Alan Lowenthal sold Boeing stock a day before her husband’s committee released damning allegations about the firm’s 737 Max airliner.  

“We’re taking action to ensure no member of Congress uses public office for personal gain once and for all,” said Republican Brian Fitzpatrick in September. “If you’re in Congress, you serve the public interest—not your portfolio.”