Democrats Break With Leaders Over Congressional Stock Trading
The New York Times
With top House Democrats skeptical of barring lawmakers from owning individual stocks, a simmering issue has exploded, especially among members facing difficult re-election races.
WASHINGTON — Facing stiff political headwinds and a flagging election-year agenda, the most vulnerable Democrats in Congress have found a way to distance themselves from their leaders: demanding an end to stock trading for all members of Congress, including senior lawmakers who are clearly leery.
The growing list of Democrats who have signed on to ethics legislation that would ban ownership of individual stocks is remarkably bipartisan, speaking to the political power of the issue. On the Democratic side, the names parallel the party’s list of endangered incumbents, many of whom rushed to sign on after Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California expressed her opposition in December.
“We introduced this in June 2020 and reintroduced it this Congress,” said Representative Abigail Spanberger of Virginia, a Democrat from a politically competitive district who wrote a stock ban with Representative Chip Roy of Texas, a conservative Republican. “We were steadily adding co-sponsors, but it is absolutely the case that the speaker’s answer to that question related to stock ownership and trading really ignited this as an issue.”
