Senate Democrats on Wednesday blocked a Republican-backed bill that would restrict congresspeople from stock buying.
The Stop Insider Trading Act, sponsored by Senator Pete Ricketts of Nebraska, failed 53-47 with no Democrats voting in support of the measure. It would haven taken 60 votes to pass.
The measure would have banned lawmakers from buy new stock in publicly traded companies and would have mandated them to give advance notice of plans to sell stocks. However, the bill allow congresspeople to keep the stocks they already have and to buy stock in privately-held companies.
Ricketts, in the midst of an aggressive race in his state, said that his bill would ban insider trading in Congress. He framed the measure as a commonsense bill that deserved passage. The bill passed the House with 13 Democrats supporting it.
“Congress’s approval rating is only 15 percent. Why do Americans have such a lack of fait in our institutions? Well, in part, because of what has happened with trading in the Congress,” Ricketts said before the vote.
The measure has interesting origins, as Ricketts has been accused by his opponent, Dan Osborn (I), of profiting from his own stock portfolio during his time as a congressperson.
According to Osborn, Ricketts made about $10 million in April 2025 after Trump backed off of his sweeping tariff plan.
Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer of New York called Ricketts plan a poor attempt at reform that would still allow congresspeople to make money on stock transactions.
“Only Senate Republicans would date call a bill that permits members of Congress to continue to own, sell, and in some instances buy stocks a stock-trading ban. They can’t be serious. The Republican bill is a permission slip for corruption, not a stock-trading ban,” Schumer said on the Senate floor.
Schumer also said that the Republicans snuck a voter identification provision into the bill.
“Republicans want to explicitly allow members to continue trading stocks in privately held companies, including companies the members oversee, a formula for disaster and corruption,” he said.
Schumer also critiqued the bill for not banning Trump from trading stocks. According to a Bloomberg analysis, Trump executed nearly 29,000 trades between January 2025 and June 2026.
