The U.S. Capitol at sunset in Washington, D.C., U.S. December 23, 2025.
Tyrone Siu | Reuters
Lawmakers could face a ban on buying new stocks under a bill poised to get its first vote Wednesday.
But hurdles remain, including opposition from most Democrats who say the bill doesn’t go far enough in preventing insider trading among lawmakers.
The bill’s main backer, Rep. Bryan Steil, R-Wis., chairs the House Administration Committee, which is expected to vote and adopt the measure Wednesday.
“Your member of Congress should not be day trading stocks,” Steil said in an interview with CNBC. “You want to day trade? There’s a place for that and it’s called Wall Street.”
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., told CNBC that if the bill is approved by committee, he will bring it to the floor for a vote. It’s unclear if the bill will be able to pass the full House. House Democratic leadership hasn’t weighed in on the bill yet, and members are hoping to offer amendments during Wednesday’s markup to strengthen the bill.
Steil’s bill is a watered-down version of previous efforts to ban insider trading among lawmakers. The measure would allow members to keep the stocks they owned when they were elected. Members could sell stocks, as long as they gave public notice seven days before the sale. Lawmakers would be able to buy and sell commodities, futures, and diversified funds, and could use dividends of stocks to purchase more shares of stocks they own.
Rep. Bryan Steil, R-Wis., leaves a meeting of the House Republican Conference in the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday, July 22, 2025.
Tom Williams | Cq-roll Call, Inc. | Getty Images
Steil’s bill would also increase fees for violations, ratcheting up fines to $2,000, or 10% of the value of transaction, whatever is greater, or the net gain from the transaction.
Rep. Joe Morelle, D-N.Y., the top Democrat on the House Administration Committee called the bill a “quarter measure.”
“This is a way to get people to believe that we’ve resolved the issue,” he told CNBC during an interview in the Capitol. “There’s too many ways to get around this. It essentially says, if you have great wealth, and you come to Congress, you can continue to have great wealth. And that’s not what we want.”
Steil brushed off concerns that the legislation didn’t go as far as others, saying that killing any bill that was deemed “not quite good enough” would prevent progress on the issue.
“It’s what I call the Goldilocks argument. The porridge is too cold. The porridge is too hot,” he said. “This is an opportunity to say yay or nay. Do you believe your member of Congress should be trading stocks while they’re in elected office?”
Democrats are coming up with their own plans. Morelle said he intends to file a discharge petition to force a vote on a bill from himself and Rep. Seth Magaziner, D-R.I., that would not only prevent members of Congress from trading stocks, but the president and vice president as well.