Today, CREW and 7 other good government organizations, including the Project on Government Oversight, Campaign Legal Center and Public Citizen, submitted a letter to Congress in opposition to the Stop Insider Trading Act (SITA), which purports to address congressional stock trading without actually preventing members of Congress from profiting off of their offices. Congress should instead pass the Restore Trust in Congress Act, a simple, popular and bipartisan solution that accomplishes what SITA purports to do. 

SITA does not ban members of Congress from owning stock, profiting from stock trades or making decisions that would increase the value of their stock portfolio that they hold. Nearly 50% of members of Congress own stock. The New York Times found that in 2022, at least 97 members of Congress bought or sold stock, bonds or other financial assets that intersected with their congressional work or reported similar transactions by their spouse or dependent child. 

Some of the most notable and valuable trades by members of Congress and their families have been sales, not purchases, such as those made during the 2020 pandemic and 2023 banking collapse. Sales during times of volatility create the appearance that officials are prioritizing their investments over resolving the crisis, prompting public outcry. 

Additionally, SITA fails to prohibit many types of private transactions including stock purchases of private companies, cryptocurrency purchases, commodity purchases, certain corporate bonds and exchange traded funds, which are the functional equivalent of a public stock purchase. For example, members could still invest in the Tesla Bull ETF, a fund designed to track and magnify Tesla’s public stock performance, while making decisions that could affect Tesla and its industry. 

The American people no longer trust that Congress is working in the public interest. This lack of trust undermines our democracy and delegitimizes the institution and the government as a whole. Passing SITA would hide insider trading instead of stopping it, leading to the same concerns we see today. The only path forward that can rejuvenate the American people’s faith in Congress is serious reform though meaningful bipartisan cooperation.

There is currently a bipartisan bill called the Restore Trust in Congress Act that effectively bans members of Congress from buying, selling and owning stocks and their equivalents and ends the conflicts of interest that have plagued Congress for far too long. Abandoning viable, bipartisan legislation in favor of partisanship and ineffectual half measures would be a political and ethical failure that would further erode Americans’ trust in government. For that reason, Congress must reject SITA and support the Restore Trust in Congress Act.

Read the letter here.

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