STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. \u2014 A bipartisan effort across both chambers of Congress is seeking to ban congressional officials and their families from purchasing and owning stocks. <\/p>\n
In the Senate, the push is being led by New York\u2019s own Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and Florida\u2019s Republican Sen. Ashley Moody. In the House of Representatives, Texas\u2019 Republican Congressmember Chip Roy and Rhode Island\u2019s Democratic Congressmember Seth Magaziner are introducing \u201ccompanion legislation.\u201d <\/p>\n
The Restore Trust in Congress Act would prevent Congressional members, their spouses, their trustees, or their dependent children \u201cfrom owning, buying, and selling individual stocks and certain other financial assets, including securities, commodities, and futures,\u201d according to a written statement. <\/p>\n
The only proposed exceptions are mutual funds, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), and bonds on the municipal, state and U.S. Treasury level. <\/p>\n
Those types of funds are considered diversified and broadly held. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt is fundamental to our Republic that members of Congress are focused on our nation and its citizens\u2019 well-being, not how they may financially profit from their positions,\u201d Gillibrand and Moody said in the statement. \u201cThat is why we are proud to introduce this commonsense bill to ban members of Congress from owning or trading individual stocks. We will continue to fight tirelessly to make sure it becomes law.\u201d<\/p>\n
Should the act become law, officials would have six months to separate their assets. Afterwards, new elects would need to divest within 90 days of their official appointment. <\/p>\n
If an official violates the law, they would be fined 10% of the value, and \u201cany profits from the transaction be disgorged to the U.S. Treasury.\u201d<\/p>\n
This comes 14 years after Gillibrand \u201cled the passage\u201d of the STOCK Act, which \u201cbars members of Congress from using insider information to buy and sell stocks.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. \u2014 A bipartisan effort across both chambers of Congress is seeking to ban congressional officials…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":101402,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[9,24,63,134,136,135],"class_list":{"0":"post-101401","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-staten-island","8":"tag-new-york","9":"tag-new-york-city","10":"tag-nyc","11":"tag-staten-island","12":"tag-staten-island-headlines","13":"tag-staten-island-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101401"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101401\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}