It’s one of those issues that seems to have broad bipartisan appeal: banning members of Congress (and their spouses) from trading stocks.
Spurred by concerns that lawmakers might be trading on non-public information, polling has consistently shown that majorities of both Democrats and Republicans want to ban congressional stock trading. Though it’s mostly Democratic members of Congress who have cosponsored bills to clamp down on the practice, it’s not hard to find Republicans who agree, including President Donald Trump.
But it’s not just about ethics. It’s also about politics.
Good, old-fashioned partisanship has long helped grease the wheels of the effort to ban stock trading on Capitol Hill. It helps to identify an enemy on the other side of the aisle, and each party has done so.
For Republicans, it’s long been Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, whose husband, Paul, is a prolific stock trader. “I watched Nancy Pelosi get rich through insider information,” Trump recently told TIME, saying he would “absolutely” sign a stock trading ban into law.
For Democrats, it’s now Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who recently bought up stocks during a tariff-induced dip. “So many of these people are crooks, liars, and frauds, and Marjorie Taylor Greene is of course, Exhibit A,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said on MSNBC earlier this month. “We do need to change the law so that sitting members of Congress cannot trade stock.”
Greene and Pelosi have long been boogeymen — or perhaps “boogeywomen” — for the other party. That both are now associated with controversial stock trading practices only makes it easy to each side to turn a more high-minded argument about ethics into cracking down on perceived malfeasance by the other side.
And in both cases, the reality is more complex than the messaging suggestions.
It’s Pelosi’s husband who owns and trades stock, and in a statement for this story, Pelosi spokesman Ian Krager said that the former speaker owns no stocks herself and “has no prior knowledge or subsequent involvement in any transactions.” Still, it was her initial opposition to a stock trading ban that generated significant momentum for a stock trading ban years ago, leading her to change her position.
Greene, meanwhile, says she also isn’t making stock trades herself. “That’s something that my portfolio manager does for me, and he did a great job,” the congresswoman told the Georgia Recorder recently. “Guess what he did? He bought the dip.”
Nonetheless, Greene is now the one who’s helped generate calls for a stock trading ban once more, with Democrats insisting that the prominent Trump ally may have been clued in to Trump’s plans to pause tariffs, which she has denied.
Meanwhile, Pelosi has not disclosed any trades made by her husband since January, let alone during the recent stock market dip.
That doesn’t mean Republicans are giving up the former speaker as a foil.
On Monday, Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri told Fox News that he planned to reintroduce the “Preventing Elected Leaders from Owning Securities and Investments Act” — otherwise known as the PELOSI Act.
