The Democrats' Congressional leaders are increasingly feeling the pressure to support a ban on lawmakers' actively trading stocks.
And finally, it look like they're starting to cave.
Not long after Nancy Pelosi came forward to express support for a trading ban despite being the poster child for lawmakers who supplement their income with day trading, her counterpart in the Senate, New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, has also hopped on the bandwagon.
According to a report in Punchbowl News, Schumer has officially thrown his weight behind a ban on trading single-name stocks by lawmakers in both the House and the Senate.
NEW - SCHUMER says he wants to see a stock trading ban get done.
— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) February 8, 2022
Over the past two years, pressure on lawmakers to adopt a ban on stock trading has intensified - and it's not just Congress: a trading scandal over at the Fed led to several senior Fed officials essentially being fired by Chairman Jerome Powell after the media picked up on financial disclosure forms detailing their trading. Late last year, the SEC also adopted tighter rules governing when corporate insiders can sell their company's stock.
Even rabid liberal and former Clinton-era Labor Secretary Robert Reich has insisted that Democrats now have enough "momentum" to make a trading ban a reality.
In December, Nancy Pelosi dismissed banning members of Congress from trading individual stocks.
In January, she reversed course following immense public pressure.
We have momentum, folks. We can ban this corruption once and for all.
Let's keep the pressure on. pic.twitter.com/CEqF96e9pN
— Robert Reich (@RBReich) February 2, 2022
Of course, as Reich continued, it's not just the Democratic leadership that trades; Senators from both parties, traded in 2021 as Newsweek reports.
But how do Republicans feel about this? As it happens, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has been aggressively pushing for a ban on lawmakers trading individual stocks (joined by - of all people - freshman Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff).
Reports about lawmakers trading resulted in memes like the following image of Pelosi on her cellphone and a handful of other images, many showing Pelosi on the phone either on Capitol Hill or during the Congressional baseball game.
SCHUMER WANTS TO PASS LAWMAKERS STOCK TRADING BAN: PUNCHBOWL
(Move the shares into another account.) pic.twitter.com/6ebm8QEnXr
— NOD (@NOD008) February 8, 2022
76% of voters across the political spectrum believe members of Congress and their spouses shouldn't be allowed to trade stocks while in office, including nearly 78% of Republicans and 80 percent of Independents.
Last month, McCarthy and Ossoff introduced a ball barring trading in single-stock names. before that, more than two dozen Dem and GOP lawmakers signed a letter to the Democratic Congressional leadership urging them to support a trading ban.
What's more, the Ban Congressional Stock Trading Act has been endorsed by several leading ethics reform groups, including the Project on Government Oversight, the National Taxpayers Union, the Taxpayers Protection Alliance, FreedomWorks, and Issue One.
The law would require all Members of Congress, their spouses and their dependent children, to put applicable investments into a qualified blind trust or divest them within 120 days after the law is enacted. In the future, newly elected lawmakers, their spouses and their dependent children would be required to do the same within 120 days of assuming office. Covered investments that cannot be moved into a blind trust must be divested
Readers can find the full bill below: