Senators have reached a bipartisan agreement to ban Congressmen from trading stocks

On Wednesday, a group of senators from both parties started up again to try to prevent Congressmen from trading stocks.

At a news conference on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, Sen. Josh Hawley, a Republican from Missouri, stated, "Congress should not be here to make a buck." "Members of Congress should not be making money off of information that is exclusively available to them,"

The idea is the most recent in a long line of laws that Congress has been trying to implement to restrict legislators' stock purchases and sales. It was officially reviewed by a Senate committee on July 24th, the Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee.

According to ethics experts, lawmakers may have an unfair edge over the investing public because of the type of information they are able to acquire.

The president, vice president, and members of Congress would not be permitted to purchase stocks or other covered investments due to the changes on the existing stock trading restriction bill. Additionally, politicians would have ninety days to liquidate their investments.

In addition, starting in March 2027, the legislation will forbid politicians' wives and dependent children from trading equities if it is approved. Beginning that year, the president, vice president, and every member of Congress of the United States would also have to remove themselves from any covered investments.

According to the senators' proposal, lawmakers would be penalised 10% of the value of each covered asset they violated or the equivalent amount of their monthly income for breaking the divestiture rule.

It has been a difficult fight to prevent members of Congress from trading stocks, at least since the beginning of the Biden administration.

One of the senators, Jon Ossoff, put his personal stock holdings in a blind trust and proposed the prohibition for the first time in 2021.

The attempt was greatly aided by the discovery that a number of senators had made extremely successful trades during the early stages of the Covid-19 outbreak when Congress members were receiving confidential briefings warning of the virus's potentially catastrophic effects on the American economy. Three senators were the subject of FBI investigations about insider trading, however, the probes were finally closed without any indictments.

Prior to the 2022 midterm elections, the initiative gained momentum with former Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's withdrawal of her opposition.

Paul Pelosi, Pelosi's multimillionaire spouse, is a frequent maker of sizable and lucrative stock deals. The trading prohibition was previously dismissed by the speaker at the time as an idiotic attempt to keep politicians out of the "free market economy."

(Sources: cnbc.com)