Senator Pete Ricketts Introduces Stop Insider Trading Act to Ban Lawmakers and Families From Buying Stocks

86% of Americans support banning congressional stock trading — 87% of Republicans, 88% of Democrats, 81% of independents

Members of Congress made over $635 million in stock trades in 2024, with some individual lawmakers trading tens of millions

The current fine for late disclosure of a stock trade under the STOCK Act is $200 — proposed bills would raise penalties to a lawmaker's monthly salary or 10% of the asset's value

Congressional leaders outperform rank-and-file lawmakers on stock trades by up to 47 percentage points per year, according to an NBER working paper — but a separate peer-reviewed study found no evidence of superior performance in aggregate

The discharge petition to force a House floor vote on a stock trading ban had 74 signatures as of late December 2025 — 144 short of the 218 needed