A dozen wildly different advocacy groups urge Congress to quickly pass a stock-trading ban bill and avoid sliding deeper into a 'downward spiral of declining public trust'
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- A dozen ideologically diverse groups are pushing Congress to ban lawmakers' stock trades.
- Ending the year without a "genuinely meaningful prohibition on stock trading" is unacceptable, they said.
- House Democratic leaders promised a compromise bill months ago but haven't produced one.
House leaders must block current lawmakers, their spouses, and their dependent children from trading individual stocks before any remaining faith in the institution totally evaporates, a diverse coalition of advocacy groups said Tuesday.
"If Congress does not act swiftly on a genuinely meaningful prohibition on stock trading, a true opportunity will have been lost and the downward spiral of declining public trust and increasing cynicism will continue," group leaders wrote in a letter directed to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, and House Committee on Administration Chairwoman Zoe Lofgren and ranking member Rodney Davis.
Those calling on lawmakers to move "with alacrity and purpose" on the ethics-related priority range from the conservative FreedomWorks to progressive MoveOn.
Other signers include the National Taxpayers Union, Public Citizen, Taxpayers Protection Alliance, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, Indivisible, RepresentUs, Progressive Change Campaign Committee, Stand Up America, and the Campaign Legal Center.
Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette, government affairs manager at the nonpartisan Project on Government Oversight, told Insider the 12 organizations threw in together to "light a fire" under leadership to impose family-wide stock trading curbs, promote the use of qualified blind trusts, and strengthen disclosure requirements before the 117th Congress comes to a close at the beginning of January.
"Time is running out, and if they don't move on a bill that at least meets the criteria we lay out in that letter, they will once again fail the American people," Hedtler-Gaudette said, adding that "Congress is not living up to its mission of representing the people first and foremost."
The request echoes the demands several stock-ban supporters within Congress itself sent to the same leaders on September 1.
The earlier letter — signatories includes Democratic Reps. Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Abigail Spanberger of Virginia, Katie Porter of California, Andy Kim of New Jersey, Joe Neguse of Colorado, Jared Golden of Maine, Angie Craig of Minnesota, and Republican Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania — called for a floor vote on a comprehensive stock ban package by the end of this month.
Lofgren aides said in June that the committee was looking into making "substantial changes" to existing stock trading rules. Administration committee staff did not reply to requests for comment about whether the September 1 letter had changed anything, or if any compromise legislation would be unveiled soon.
Insider's "Conflicted Congress" investigation has revealed that 72 lawmakers and at least 182 senior-level congressional staffers have violated the STOCK Act by failing to properly disclose their stock trades.
The New York Times today reported that "sat on congressional committees that potentially gave them insight into the companies whose shares they reported buying or selling." Insider has previously detailed numerous congressional conflicts-of-interest, such as lawmakers who oversee military policy trading defense contractor stocks and those voting on COVID-19 policies buying and selling the shares of vaccine-makers and other pandemic-sensitive companies.
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