The House votes Wednesday on a bill that would prevent members of Congress from buying stocks while in office. Not selling. Buying. They can keep what they have. They just can't add to the portfolio they definitely built using information you'll never see.
The bill has public support. Overwhelming public support, according to every poll conducted since humans learned what Congress does with nonpublic information. This matters to exactly zero representatives who've spent the last decade explaining why banning congressional stock trading would somehow violate the sacred principle of letting elected officials day-trade defense contractors.
The technical setup here is pristine. You've got a clear resistance level at basic ethical standards. Support at "are you f*cking kidding me." Volume spiking because people discovered their senators knew about a pandemic before they did and sold everything while telling the public to stay calm.
But don't worry. The bill doesn't touch existing holdings. It doesn't require blind trusts. It doesn't claw back profits from trades made while drafting the bills that moved those stocks. It just says maybe don't buy more while you're literally writing tax policy. That's the compromise position. The radical proposal is "stop doing additional insider trading going forward."
Best part? This needed a vote. Congress had to schedule time to decide if Congress should be allowed to trade on congressional information. They'll debate it. Amend it. Water it down until it bans purchasing stocks unless you really want to or it's a Tuesday or Mercury is in retrograde.
The real resistance level is at "passing the Senate." That's where bills go to die while senators check their Lockheed Martin positions and schedule another meeting about whether meetings should be scheduled.
Public support means dick when the public doesn't vote on the bill.
Photo by Cesar Done on Unsplash
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