Even as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., told reporters last week that a bill to ban members of Congress from trading stocks may get to the floor in the next couple of weeks, advocates for the measure remain skeptical action will be taken.
"I think it's clear from my public comments that I remain skeptical," Walter Shaub, a senior ethics fellow at the Project on Government Oversight who was present on a call briefing to government organizations about the plan said, according to Business Insider.
Pelosi told reporters during a press conference last week that the latest version of a bill coming from the relevant House committees still does not have the votes needed to pass such a measure.
"Members have been working on this," she told reporters Sept. 14. "Just because somebody introduces a bill doesn't mean it becomes the law of the land. Just because — what do they say, they have 60 [votes]? That's not even a quarter of what we need, a third of what we need, to pass a bill, regardless of how bipartisan it is."
Pelosi said the committee responsible for the proposal was still "going back-and-forth talking about things" such a bill would include.
"We believe we have a product we can bring to the floor this month," she said. "When the bill comes out you will see what it is."
The New York Times published an investigative piece on Congressional stock trading the day before Pelosi's press conference, reporting that 97 lawmakers or their families bought and sold "financial assets" that Congress could impact during the last three years.
The report found members of Congress on both sides of the aisle making trades in various industries and regulatory areas they have impact on, such as pharmaceuticals and aircraft manufacturing, between 2019-21, according to the report.
"The American people don't want us day trading for profit and engaging in active trading of the very equities that are connected to the policies that we are deciding on and voting on every day," Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, said in the article.
The Times said the article did not include reported trades by Pelosi or her husband Paul.
"We have not heard exactly what's happening," Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., who sponsored her own bill on the issue in February, told Business Insider. "I can't say I'm confident."
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