For 12 years, Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) has pushed for a ban on congressional stock trading, calling the practice “corrupt,” “unacceptable” and “wrong.”The first time he and Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) presented an amendment in 2012 that would prohibit members of Congress from playing the stock market,...

For 12 years, Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) has pushed for a ban on congressional stock trading, calling the practice “corrupt,” “unacceptable” and “wrong.”

Now, Merkley is confident an amended version of the Ending Trading and Holdings in Congressional Stocks (ETHICS) Act has enough bipartisan support that it will come out of a markup meeting with the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs on Wednesday with the votes necessary to present the amendment for a vote.

EDIT: It passed out of committee, so now it can go to the floor. https://www.businessinsider.com/senate-new-ban-stock-trading-merkley-ossoff-hawley-2024-7

One key difference between this bill and previous proposals is that it doesn’t allow for lawmakers to continue holding stocks via “blind trusts,” which some have criticized as insufficient.

There are still certain assets that lawmakers and their families could continue to hold, such as mutual funds, US Treasury bills, and municipal bonds.

Despite the progress represented by Wednesday’s committee vote, it’s unclear when or if the bill will come up for a vote.

Just a few weeks of session remain for the rest of this year, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has historically been hesitant to bring up bills that don’t already have enough votes to pass. It’s unclear if that’s the case with this bill.

    • MsPenguinette@lemmy.world
      15·
      3 months ago

      Now that bribes thank you gifts are legal for officials, it’s not like we are even asking them to cut off all their corruption money faucets…

  • WatDabney@sopuli.xyz
    19·
    3 months ago

    This is an interesting thing to come along right now.

    On the one hand, it seems odd in the face of the fact that the Supreme Court appears to be doing everything they can to normalize and even legalize overt corruption. It would seem that all Congress has to do is let them, and they’ll benefit from it just as much as the justices will.

    But on the other hand, the Supreme Court is also trying to expand their power to legislate from the bench, and that cant be sitting well with Congress. And Alito and Thomas, at least, are so vividly and plainly corrupt that it could be to Congress’s advantage, ironic as it might be, to set themselves up as the arbiters of government ethics, specifically to undermine the grotesquely corrupt SC.

  • Seleni@lemmy.world
    3·
    3 months ago

    This is why I’m not against term limits. He’s been our senator for a long time and always fought the good fight.

  • Jackcooper@lemmy.world
    2·
    3 months ago

    To clarify will they still be able to do index funds or 401k type stuff or is this a ban on all holdings?

    • Shawdow194@kbin.run
      6·
      3 months ago

      Index funds seem fine for any gov position

      You do kinda want them investing domestically or eise there is a conflict of interest

    • memfree@lemmy.mlOP
      2·
      3 months ago

      I updated the post with a new link. Business Insider says they could hold certain mutual funds, and they link to a PDF of the full text – but it is a seemingly random documentcloud.org link of the sort where one might not trust anonymous users, so I leave it to you (and anyone else) to decide if you trust Business Insider and follow the link there.