Heritage Action supports H.R. 7008, the Stop Insider Trading Act, sponsored by Representative Bryan Steil, to restrict stock trading for members of Congress. This vote will be included as a key vote on our Legislative Scorecard.
Americans deserve congressional representation that acts in their interest. Stock trading by members of Congress and the real and perceived impacts of insider trading have become a clear impediment to Americans’ trust in Congress. H.R. 7008, the Stop Insider Trading Act, would finally institute real guardrails and help Congress rebuild trust with the American people.
Polling from the University of Maryland’s Program for Public Consultation shows that 86% of Americans favor banning members of Congress from trading individual stocks. That includes strong majorities of Republicans, Democrats, and Independents—rare consensus in a deeply divided political climate.
The Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act, or STOCK Act, signed into law in 2012, claimed to restrict members of Congress from playing the stock market with insider knowledge through the application of ethics guidelines and reporting requirements. Since 2012, social media accounts and automated stock tracking platforms have exposed gaps in the legislation, putting a spotlight on a web of government corruption reports that were previously hidden away in reporting databases. This has led to the broad recognition that the STOCK Act has not effectively stopped insider trading by members of Congress.
The Stop Insider Trading Act addresses these gaps. Members of Congress would be directly prohibited from buying stock in private companies while in office. Transparency around planned sales would be enhanced by requiring lawmakers to disclose stock sales 7 to 14 days in advance so the public can see transactions before they happen. Finally, penalties for violating these reporting requirements would rise to a minimum of $2,000 or 10% of the trade’s value, whichever is greater, plus the value of any profits made from that sale of stock. In short, if the sale violates the law, the member will be guaranteed to lose money from that transaction.
Members of Congress routinely receive confidential briefings on legislation, regulatory actions, and economic policy—information that directly affects markets. The ability to purchase stocks on that knowledge creates a clear conflict of interest.
The Stop Insider Trading Act tackles that conflict directly. Instead of relying on disclosure after the fact, it would prohibit members of Congress, their spouses, and dependent children from purchasing individual stocks while the member is in office. They could still invest, but only in diversified vehicles like mutual funds or exchange-traded funds, which don’t involve betting on specific companies. Members of Congress who would prefer to remove any perception of insider trading could also use a blind trust, an increasingly popular option.
The Stop Insider Trading Act is about more than stocks. It’s about whether Americans believe their representatives are serving them or their stock portfolios. Confronting insider trading in Congress would be a meaningful step forward toward restoring trust in elected officials.
Furthermore, the Rules Committee added the photo identification requirements from the SAVE America Act (H.R. 7296) to the bill. The voter photo ID requirement ensures that an individual who completes a ballot in a federal election is, in fact, the individual who is supposed to be casting it. This measure also helps to deter ballot theft.
This is a popular and commonsense safeguard to reduce fraud in elections. A Pew Research Poll from August 2025 found 83% of American adults support requiring all voters to show government-issued photo identification to vote, with a partisan breakdown of 95% of Republicans in favor and 71% of Democrats supporting. Americans understand that showing a photo ID is a simple way to confirm that someone is who he or she says they are, whether that’s boarding an airplane, buying a pack of beer, or checking in at a hotel.
This merges two popular proposals, restricting stock trading for members of Congress and establishing voter identification requirements, under one core message: it is time to restore trust in government, whether that’s in Congress or federal elections.
Heritage Action supports H.R. 7008, the Stop Insider Trading Act, sponsored by Representative Bryan Steil, to restrict stock trading for members of Congress. This vote will be included as a key vote on our Legislative Scorecard.