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The Senate’s attempt at banning lawmakers from trading stocks made it through its first hurdle on Wednesday, but a lack of Republican support for the move signals a rocky road ahead for the effort.
Sen. Josh Hawley’s Preventing Elected Leaders from Owning Securities and Investments Act, or PELOSI Act, advanced in the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Accountability Committee, but the Missouri Republican was the only GOP member on the panel to vote for it.
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Attempts to ban lawmakers from trading stocks have typically not gone far over the years, but Hawley was hopeful that his bill would be an exception.
Republicans on the panel were not thrilled with the bill.
Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Chair Rand Paul, R-Ky., told Fox News Digital that the bill was “poorly written.” He warned that it could disincentivize financially successful Americans from running for office and accused the bill of targeting Trump.
“I think it’s a sort of heavy-handed, not very thoughtful approach,” he said.
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The Missouri Republican’s measure would ban lawmakers and their spouses from purchasing, selling or holding individual stocks for the duration of the lawmaker’s time in office.
Lawmakers would also annually check in with either the House or Senate ethics committees to ensure they are in compliance each year, and the Government Accountability Office would conduct a compliance audit every two years.
The bill also includes a provision added at the last-minute to ban the next president and vice president from holding or trading stocks while in office, effectively excluding President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance from the ban.
Hawley argued that Trump supported his measure — the president told reporters that he liked the bill “conceptually” and wanted to read into it more — and that he was open to making changes at the committee level to the bill.
“If somebody really, genuinely wants to improve the bill, I’m happy to tweak it, work with people,” he said. “We’ve worked on this for years, but if they just want to kill it, then I’m not very interested in that. I want to advance it.”
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But the likelihood of the bill making it to the Senate floor, for now, does not appear to be high given the resistance among Republicans and Trump’s change in tone just hours after seemingly endorsing the bill.
“I wonder why Hawley would pass a Bill that Nancy Pelosi is in absolute love with — He is playing right into the dirty hands of the Democrats,” Trump said on his social media platform, Truth Social. “It’s a great Bill for her, and her ‘husband,’ but so bad for our Country! I don’t think real Republicans want to see their President, who has had unprecedented success, TARGETED, because of the ‘whims’ of a second-tier Senator named Josh Hawley!”
Indeed, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who has been scrutinized for her growing stock portfolio over the years, endorsed Hawley’s bill shortly after it advanced in committee.
And when asked by reporters if the bill would get any floor time in the future, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said he doubted “we put anything on the floor that just had one Republican on it.”
Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., a member of the Homeland Security panel, called the bill “obnoxious,” and contended that lawmakers already have insider trading laws that govern what they can and can’t do, noting that “if I were to start trading stocks, you’d know about it right away” given that Congress requires quarterly disclosure reports.
“You might as well title this thing the Career Politician Protection Act, because we already have created so many disincentives, we’ve made it so unattractive for somebody to give up work in the private sector,” Johnson told Fox News Digital.
And Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., said that he was a proponent of lawmakers not buying and selling stocks, but noted that as chair of the Senate Ethics Committee, it’s up to him to actually enforce the ban.
“I just think there are things in it that need to be — there’s so many details that are not fully thought through on it,” he told Fox News Digital. “The concept is right. It’s not ready for prime time yet.”
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