by WorldTribune Staff / 247 Real News September 30, 2026
Senate Democrats on Wednesday blocked legislation to end insider trading in Congress.
The Stop Insider Trading Act, which passed in the House in July, is supported by more than 80% of the American public.
A poll from the University of Maryland published in 2023 found that 86% of Americans on both sides of the political spectrum supported banning lawmakers from trading stocks.
The legislation would have banned lawmakers from buying new stocks in publicly traded companies and would have required them to provide advance notice of plans to sell stocks.
But the legislation would have allowed lawmakers to keep the stocks they already own and to buy private stocks.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said House Republicans watered down the legislation before passing it over the summer and then added a “poison pill” by adding a provision that would require people to present valid voter identification when voting.
The Stop Insider Trading Act failed by a vote of 53-47. No Democrat voted in support of the measure.
It needed 60 votes to advance on the Senate floor.
The legislation was sponsored by Nebraska Republican Sen. Pete Ricketts, who argued before the vote that his bill would “ban congressional insider trading” and touted it as a “commonsense” reform that “we need to pass.”
It passed the House in July by a vote of 232-198 with the support of 13 Democrats.
“Congress’s approval rating is only 15 percent. Why do Americans have such a lack of faith in our institutions? Well, in part, because of what has happened with trading in the Congress,” Ricketts said on the Senate floor before the vote.
