Rep. Mark Alford (R-MO) on Wednesday proposed legislation that would ban congressional stock trading as he said that too many lawmakers are engaging in “suspicious stock trades.”
“As public servants, we should hold ourselves to a higher standard and avoid the mere appearance of corruption. Unfortunately, too many members of Congress are engaging in suspicious stock trades based on non-public information to enrich themselves,” Alford said in a statement.
“These gross violations of the public trust make clear: we must finally take action to ban members and their spouses from owning or selling individual stocks,” he continued.
The Missouri conservative proposed the the PELOSI Act, a bill that would bar lawmakers and their spouses from holding, purchasing, or selling individual stocks while in office; however, it would allow investments in diversified mutual funds, exchange-traded funds, or U.S. Treasury bonds.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) introduced the Senate version of the bill.
Lawmakers who make financial transactions violating the PELOSI Act would be required to return their alleged ill-gotten gains to the Treasury Department. The House or Senate ethics committees would impose a fine on the lawmaker of ten percent per wrongful transaction.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) backed a stock trading ban on Wednesday, saying a “few bad actions” have deteriorated Americans’ trust in lawmakers.
“You want me to tell you my honest opinion on that? I’m in favor of that, because I don’t think we should have any appearance of impropriety here,” he said.
President Donald Trump has backed the idea in April.
“I watched Nancy Pelosi get rich through insider information, and I would be okay with it. If they send that to me, I would do it,” Trump said.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) also supported the proposal.
The PELOSI Act would build up on the efforts of the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act of 2012, a bipartisan bill that requires public disclosure of stock trading over $1,000 made on behalf of Congressmen or their spouses within 45 days:
In 2011, Breitbart News senior contributor and Government Accountability Institute (GAI) President Peter Schweizer rocked official Washington with his investigative revelations of insider trading by members of Congress. Left-leaning Slate hailed Schweizer’s blockbuster book on the topic, Throw Them All Out, “the book that started the STOCK Act stampede.”
One of the main figures featured in Schweizer’s Throw Them All Out was then-chairman of the House Financial Services Committee Spencer Bachus (R-AL), who announced he would not seek reelection after the book’s revelations.
The late Andrew Breitbart called on Bachus to resign from the revelations and CBS’s 60 Minutes did an investigative report based on Schweizer’s revelations that won them the Joan Shorenstein Barone Award for excellence in Washington-based journalism.
Sean Moran is a policy reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on X @SeanMoran3.
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