This week, leadership in the House introduced a new bill to ban members of Congress from trading stocks. Unfortunately, the legislation is terrible and we cannot support it in its current form. The new proposal contains a gaping loophole that would allow ethics officials to approve blind trusts that aren’t completely blind. So while the bill would better prevent insider trading in Congress, it does not go far enough in ensuring that members of Congress will eliminate all potential financial conflicts of interest. Even worse, the bill would apply the new rules to the executive and judicial branches, which could worsen the ethics program in the White House and federal agencies (the courts are a whole other story). All hope is not lost, however. The House left town this week without voting on this bill, and they likely won’t return until after the midterm elections. The lack of a vote does suggest a lack of commitment to this issue from House leadership, as Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-VA), a big champion of efforts to ban congressional stock trading, laid out in a tweet thread. But this gives members in the House time to improve upon this bill from leadership or to rally around existing, stronger legislation like the bill from Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) and Matt Rosendale (R-MT), and Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Steve Daines (R-MT), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), and Debbie Stabenow (D-MN). We’re also awaiting legislation from a Senate working group to ban members of Congress from trading stocks. We hope that bill is stronger than the legislation just introduced in the House, and if it is, we’ll be encouraging both chambers to rally around that proposal. | 
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