Representatives Abigail Spanberger and Chip Roy don’t often find themselves fighting on the same side. But Spanberger, a moderate Democrat from Virginia, and Roy, a conservative Republican from Texas, both support a bill that would ban legislators from trading stocks in public companies to keep them from profiting from the insider knowledge they're privy to on Capitol Hill.
They're each lining up behind legislation proposed by Sens. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., and Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., which would require lawmakers and their immediate family members to put any stocks they own in blind trusts, eliminating any perceived conflicts of interest.
“When we’re going to briefings about issues that might be percolating in the world or when we’re voting on legislation that could potentially move markets, it just seems inappropriate to me that we currently have the ability to be able to buy or sell stocks that may or may not be associated with those decisions,” Spanberger told NBC News in an interview.
Congress tried to regulate stock trading by its members nearly a decade ago when the Stock Act became law to combat insider trading. But lawmakers still buy and sell hundreds of millions in stocks every single year, including at the beginning of the Covid pandemic, when they received detailed closed-door briefings before the rest of the country understood the scope of the disease.
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