Early in August, House Democrats plan to unveil the basic outline of their long-awaited stock ban proposal.
The proposed framework would require top employees, spouses, and members of Congress to either sell off all of their assets or place them in a qualified blind trust.
Mutual funds would still be permitted to be held by lawmakers, spouses, and employees.
According to Punchbowl News, the leadership’s objective is to pass the measure through the House in September.
The framework will be released “in the coming weeks,” said Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., who is in charge of examining the many plans as chair of the House Administration Committee.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul purchased more than $1 million in shares of semiconductor company Nvidia this week while Congress was discussing a package to inject billions into the semiconductor chip business, prompting criticism of congressional stock purchases once more.
The House is anticipated to pass that bill on Thursday after the Senate did it on Wednesday.
Prior to the Sunday vote on the CHIPS + measure, which would inject $52 billion into the semiconductor sector, Paul Pelosi purchased 20,000 shares worth between $1 million and $5 million on June 17.
In her weekly briefing last week, the speaker was asked if her husband had ever bought or sold shares based on information he had obtained from her.
She scoffed, “No.” Definitely not, after then Pelosi left the podium.
Paul Pelosi has been hailed as one of history’s most successful stock traders, and the Pelosis are among the wealthiest couples in Congress.
The speaker’s office routinely makes mention of Nancy’s lack of stock ownership.
It has been widely accepted among both political parties for months that members’ and their spouses’ individual stock trades should be prohibited.
Since Pelosi first indicated a lukewarm openness to such a ban in February, lawmakers from both parties have introduced a number of legislation, but none of them have reached the floor.
Sen. Josh Hawley requested in a letter to Democrats last Wednesday that a hearing be held on outlawing stock trading.
Sen. Gary Peters, chair of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, received a letter from Hawley in which he stated, “This topic of whether and how Members of Congress engage in various financial transactions merits consideration by the Committee.”
Speaker Pelosi and her husband exceeded the S&P 500 by a staggering 14.3 percent in 2020, according to Hawley.
According to a survey, 90% of actively managed investment funds fall short of outperforming the market.
Pelosi initially opposed a stock ban, but she later stated she would support one if it applied to all of government, not just Congress, in February.
According to the California Democrat, “it must be government-wide.”
“The judicial system does not report.” The Supreme Court doesn’t disclose anything. It makes significant decisions every day without reporting stock transactions.
Although it wasn’t overwhelming, Pelosi’s position had changed from three months prior when she was vehemently opposed to removing her husband and the rest of Congress from the ability to trade stocks.
“[Lawmakers] should be able to participate in it,” she said in December. “We’re a free market economy.”
Despite widespread support, some Democrats hold leadership responsible for preventing such proposals from even coming up for a vote.
Rep. Abigail Spanberger, D-Va., a moderate who drafted a bipartisan proposal to require members to place their assets in a blind trust, claimed that “the people who control the calendar don’t want to bring it to the floor.”
“The persons in charge of jurisdictional committees don’t want to bring it to the floor.”
Owner of Financial Leasing Services Paul Pelosi has amassed a net worth of almost $135 million.
With an estimated net worth of at least $46,123,051, the House Speaker is listed as the 14th wealthiest member of Congress in 2021 by Insider.
Due to Paul Pelosi’s successful stock trading, the social investing software Iris now lets users follow the couple’s investments and receive notifications whenever Paul makes a buy so they can follow suit.
Additionally, the well-known Twitter account @NancyTracker, which monitored Pelosi’s investments, was blocked from the platform.
Using “any nonpublic information obtained from the individual’s position” or “gained from performance of the individual’s duties” for personal gain is prohibited for members of Congress under the 2012 STOCK Act.
Additionally, rather than once a year, it mandated that parliamentarians publicly declare any transaction involving stocks, bonds, commodities futures, and other securities within 45 days.
More than 220 other congressmen and senators, or almost 40% of Congress, together possessed at least $225 million in stock assets in 2020, according to an Insider analysis, so Pelosi is far from alone in following her husband’s stock trades.
According to an Insider investigation, from January through September 2021, 49 lawmakers and 182 congressional workers violated the STOCK Act by failing to declare trades.