Back in April, President Donald Trump said he would “absolutely” sign a bill banning members of Congress from trading stocks. Amid declining poll numbers and poor economic news, signing a ban would provide Trump an easy political victory ahead of the fall’s government funding fights. The public overwhelmingly supports a ban, and there are multiple bills with bipartisan support in both houses of Congress. But when one proposed ban cleared a Senate committee vote last week, instead of hailing the result, Trump attacked one of the bill’s chief Republican supporters, Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri. Why?
Until not too long ago, insider trading laws did not apply to members of Congress. This went about as you would expect: Investigations revealed that lawmakers profited off of stock transactions made during the 2008 recession and the 2010 health care debate. In 2012, Congress passed the STOCK Act, which made insider trading laws applicable to members of Congress and their staffs, and required disclosures of trades within 45 days for both transparency and enforcement.
The STOCK Act has been a failure, and its shortcomings have been apparent for some time.
It didn’t work. Dozens of lawmakers (not to mention their staffers) have violated the law, according to a 2021 Business Insider investigation. Members of Congress and their family members continue to purchase assets “in industries that could be affected by their legislative committee work,” The New York Times found in 2022.
Last week, the House Ethics Committee issued a report criticizing Rep. Mike Kelly, R-Pa., for “a lack of candor” in its inquiry into his wife’s 2020 purchase of shares in a steel company in his district. Victoria Kelly made the transaction a day after the congressman learned the first Trump administration would intervene to protect the company, days before that information was public. The committee urged the couple to sell their holdings. Kelly rejected the suggestion, saying “we got completely exonerated.”
As for the timeliness of disclosures, lawmakers routinely file late to an extent that’s almost comical. NOTUS reported this week that Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., disclosed “hundreds of thousands of dollars in stock and bond trades” anywhere between one and a half and two and a half years after they occurred.
In short, the STOCK Act has been a failure, and its shortcomings have been apparent for some time. For several years, an ideologically diverse group of lawmakers ranging from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., to Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, have pushed a trading ban. But in both Democratic- and Republican-controlled Congresses, their efforts have stalled out. Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., first opposed and was later cool to a ban. Current Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has recently expressed guarded support, but like Pelosi has not shown any interest in actually letting legislation come to the floor.
But efforts continue, including from Republicans: In the House, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., says she will file what’s known as a “discharge petition” to try to force the full House to vote on a ban proposed by Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn. In the Senate, after Trump expressed support for a ban, Hawley introduced a bill to ban trades and require lawmakers to sell “financial holdings” by the start of their next term. On Wednesday, the bill cleared the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee with support from Hawley and every Democratic member of the panel. Rather than hail the vote, though, Trump laid into Hawley on social media, calling him a “second-tier Senator.”
Hawley told reporters Thursday that Trump’s anger was based on a misunderstanding. After he told the president it did not apply to the presidency or vice presidency until 2029, Hawley said, “he was like, Oh, that is not what he had been told.” Let’s give Trump the benefit of the doubt — a fraught exercise at any time — and assume his post was indeed a case of miscommunication. Now that that’s cleared up, the president could pick up the phone tomorrow and get a ban passed. He could pick Hawley’s bill, Burchett’s or whichever other Republican he wants to receive credit. He could tell Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., to give him something to sign, and they’d obey. It’s the only way any law passes in this Congress anyway. The president doesn’t care about politicians self-enriching. But he hasn’t, because the president doesn’t care about politicians self-enriching. Sure, Hawley’s bill wouldn’t apply to him, and sure, he’d love to get one over on Pelosi. But this president is spending roughly $1 billion in taxpayer funds renovating a plane that he’ll keep after leaving office. This president has dived headlong into crypto products — including his personal $TRUMP meme coin — that have added billions to his family’s net worth. This president, according to an analysis from Bloomberg News, has more than doubled his personal net worth since the start of his re-election campaign. His presidency was never about draining the swamp; he is the swamp. And even the tiniest effort to rebut that image is, for him, a bridge too far.
James Downie is an opinion editor for MS NOW Daily. 
