Some House Republicans are becoming increasingly frustrated with their leadership for not progressing swiftly on a stock trading ban—an issue that has troubled Congress for years, despite repeated bipartisan calls for reform.
Last month, the House Administration Committee advanced a bill, introduced by Chair Bryan Steil (R-Wis.), that would allow members of Congress, their spouses, and their dependent children to retain their current stock holdings but would prohibit them from purchasing new stocks. However, no further action has been taken on the bill since its advancement.
The lack of progress has prompted some rank-and-file Republicans to renew their calls for a stock trading ban, especially after President Trump urged Congress to pass legislation on this issue during his State of the Union address on Tuesday night, The Hill reported.
“If you have a strong bipartisan majority in Congress (supporting the issue), if you have overwhelming support from the public. You have the president of the United States specifically referencing it in the State of the Union, why pray tell is it not put on the floor?” Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) said.
He added that a stock trading ban is long “overdue.” “It’s very frustrating,” Fitzpatrick said. “This should have been the first thing we took up.”
Fitzpatrick supported a bipartisan bill last year, sponsored by Representatives Chip Roy (R-Texas) and Seth Magaziner (D-R.I.), called the Restore Trust in Congress Act. This legislation aims to prohibit lawmakers, along with their spouses, dependent children, and trustees, from owning, buying, or selling individual stocks.
Representative Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) introduced a discharge petition to compel a vote on the Roy and Magaziner bill. However, the leadership ultimately chose to advance Steil’s bill, named the Stop Insider Trading Act, through the committee.
During his speech on Tuesday, Trump urged members of Congress to pass Steil’s legislation “without delay.”
Meanwhile, one of the House’s most successful stock traders – retiring former Speaker Nancy Pelosi – recently claimed she hasn’t been serving in Congress for the money, even though her net worth has increased by a staggering amount during her decades on Capitol Hill.
During a forum at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, Pelosi noted that she was the highest-paid member of Congress while serving as Speaker of the House. Despite asserting that she was not motivated by financial gain in her political career, her wealth has increased by at least 2,292% over her 37 years in Congress.
“At the time, I was too, the highest paid person on Capitol Hill. As a woman, that was a big deal. Not that I was there for the money,” Pelosi said.
As of early 2026, Pelosi’s net worth is estimated to be $270 million, according to Quiver Quantitative. In 2024, her stock portfolio outperformed the S&P 500 by nearly 200%, leading to calls for reforms on stock trading rules for lawmakers. This performance also raised concerns regarding potential illegal insider trading on her part.
According to the 2024 Congress Trading Report by the financial data platform Unusual Whales, Nancy Pelosi’s investment portfolio increased by 70.9% from December 29, 2023, to December 30, 2024. This growth significantly outperformed the S&P 500, which had a return of 24.9% during the same period. In fact, she outperformed many of the largest hedge funds in the world in 2024.
Last July, Trump called for Pelosi to be investigated for insider trading.
In a column for the Washington Examiner, Jaimie Erker, director of communications for the Centennial Institute, Colorado Christian University’s public policy think tank, noted that more than 100 lawmakers make an average of 10,000 trades a year, many in anticipation of congressional action that affects stock prices.
She also noted that the penalties imposed on members of Congress caught performing insider trading are paltry compared to ordinary Americans, and warned that the imbalance will lead to political instability.
“Obviously, there is a double standard in the deterrence of insider trading. What happens to a society that holds its elected officials to a different standard than the very people they represent?” she wrote.