‘Americans Want This to Stop’: Campaign to Ban Members of Congress from Stock Trading Heats Up

WASHINGTON, DC - OCTOBER 22: The U.S. Capitol Building is seen on October 22, 2021 in Wash
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Amy Furr

Research showing politicians made trades worth more than $1 billion in 2023 has bolstered a campaign to ban congressional leaders from stock trading, a practice that has long been criticized.

There are some members of Congress who support a proposed law called the ETHICS Act but it will need even more backers to be passed, the Daily Mail reported Sunday.

Those who have benefited from stock trading include former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi who reportedly made trades reaching approximately $100 million since 2019, with returns in 2023 that hit 65 percent, the Mail article said.

“Mark Green, the Republican chair of the Homeland Security Committee, was found to have made gains of 122.2 percent,” the report noted.

However, trading community Unusual Whales has joined forces with the anti-corruption group called RepresentUs to push against the practice.

“They say politicians should be banned from owning or trading stock entirely to prevent them working with inside information or taking decisions based on their own financial interests,” the Mail article said.

In January, Unusual Whales shared an infographic regarding the politicians’ trading in 2023.

“Like every year since 2020, US politicians beat the market. And many in Congress made unusually timed trades resulting in huge gains. Here are the top performers of 2023,” the group said:

Meanwhile, RepresentUs CEO Joshua Graham Lynn expressed displeasure at such trading practices among politicians. He stated, “It’s outrageous that members of Congress are gaming the stock market while millions of Americans struggle to make ends meet. I’d call it gangster behavior, but that would imply it’s illegal and, sadly, it is not.”

“The overwhelming majority of Americans want this to stop. So let’s make it stop,” Lynn added.

In regard to insider trading, author, president of the Government Accountability Institute (GAI), and Breitbart News Senior Contributor Peter Schweizer reported in 2013 that Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AL) announced he would not seek reelection after serving 11 terms:

After chairing the powerful House Financial Services Committee for six years, Bachus gave up his chairmanship in 2012 following a Office of Congressional Ethics investigation. In my book, Throw Them All Out, I, along with subsequent reporting by Breitbart News, uncovered evidence of insider trading. 60 Minutes and I partnered together on an investigation that uncovered insider trading by Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Bachus. Congress then passed the Stop Trading On Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act to ban members of Congress from engaging in insider trading.

Not surprisingly, Bachus’s friends on the committee cleared him of the charges, but not before he was forced to spend $422,000 in legal fees funded by his campaign account and another $209,000 from his legal expense trust. In true crony fashion, as Politico reported, “the bulk of Bachus’s legal defense fund take came from corporations and PACs with ties to Alabama, including Mortgage American, Inc., Bryant Bank, and Citizens Bancorp of Winfield, Inc.”

At the time, Schweizer highlighted the fact that “this brand of cynical, crony capitalist behavior led the late Andrew Breitbart to be the first to call for Bachus’s resignation.”

In February 2023, Rep. Zach Nunn (R-IA) introduced bipartisan legislation to “prevent Members of Congress and their spouses from holding or trading individual stocks,” which would make it more difficult to practice insider trading, Breitbart News reported.

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