Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said on Nov. 12 that Senate Democrats will ban stock trading for members of Congress and White House officials once they take the majority in January.
Responding to a post from President Donald Trump, Schumer wrote on X, “Senate Democrats will ban stock trading for all Members of Congress and White House officials, and hold you and your administration accountable for all the ways your rampant corruption has made life more expensive for families.”
Trump had written on Truth Social that Schumer “just stated that he wants to end corruption in the United States.” Trump said he assumed Schumer meant Democratic-run states, naming California, Minnesota, Illinois, Maine, and New York, where he said “Billions of Dollars are being stolen on an hourly basis.”
“Hopefully his words will ring true! It will be an honor to work with him on this very big Democrat problem,” Trump wrote.
Schumer replied that he was referring to the president’s own stock trades, which he said were more than those of all members of Congress combined at nearly 30,000. He also cited what he called Trump’s cryptocurrency “scam,” a “Qatari-gifted luxury jet,” a “billionaire-funded ballroom,” and “pardons for big donors.”
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), who is expected to become speaker in January, has also made a stock trading ban part of the new majority’s plans.
“In cleaning up the mess here in Congress, one of the most decisive things that we can do is to ban members of the House and Senate from trading stock. It is our intention to do just that,” Jeffries said at a press conference on Nov. 9.
On Nov. 12, Jeffries said again that Democrats need to “get big money out of politics and end Citizens United,” and “that should begin by prohibiting members of Congress from trading stock.”
He also mentioned ending the war in Iran, reversing Medicaid cuts, and extending the Affordable Care Act tax credits.
In both remarks, Jeffries named only members of Congress in regard to stock trading. In July, he said House Democrats would only support a ban that also covers the president, the vice president, and the Cabinet.
That question was at the center of the last fight over a ban. On July 22, the House passed the Stop Insider Trading Act from Rep. Bryan Steil (R-Wis.) 232–198, with more than a dozen Democrats voting for it. The bill would have barred members, their spouses, and their dependent children from buying stocks. It would not have required them to sell stocks they already own.
The Senate blocked the bill on Sept. 30 in a 53–47 procedural vote, short of the 60 votes it needed, as Senate Democrats voted against it. The bill also included a requirement that voters show photo identification. Democrats objected that the bill did not cover the president, and Schumer called the voter ID provision a “poison pill.”
“If Senate Republicans cared about reining in stock trading, they would advance a bill that prohibits the president from trading stocks,” Schumer said on the Senate floor on Sept. 29.
In a floor speech before the vote, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) said the bill’s rules “are enforced with real penalties.” He said “the American people overwhelmingly support a photo ID requirement,” and that Democrats were treating it as a problem.
The White House backed the bill. “President Trump has called for a stock trading ban to be passed without delay,” it said in a July 22 statement of administration policy.
White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis said in a statement to The Epoch Times that Trump “has launched an all-out war on fraud across the entire federal government” and that congressional Democrats “have refused to do anything to stop waste, fraud, and abuse in our government.”
“The Democrats unanimously voted against the Stop Insider Trading Act, which would have ensured that Members of Congress cannot profit from insider information. They have no credibility on this issue,” Bis said.
The Epoch Times reached out to Thune and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who will lead House Republicans in the minority, for comment.
Jackson Richman and Nathan Worcester contributed to this report.
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