Public Office Is a Public Trust, Not a Stock Tip
The people who set tariffs, hand out contracts, write regulations, and steer the economy often know—or decide—something that moves a company's stock before the rest of us find out. When those same people trade individual stocks, the suspicion writes itself. Congress passed the STOCK Act in 2012 to make members disclose their trades, but disclosure didn't stop the conduct or restore trust. It just left a paper trail.
This one doesn't take a constitutional amendment—it's a bill Congress could pass tomorrow. And unlike the versions moving today, ours closes the biggest hole of all: it covers the President, too.
Here's the part most people don't know. The main federal criminal conflict-of-interest law—18 U.S.C. §208—forces almost every executive-branch official to step aside from matters that affect their own finances. But that law specifically exempts the President and the Vice President.
Sit with that. The two officials with the most power to move markets—through tariffs, federal contracts, regulation, appointments, even a single public statement—are the only ones the core conflict law doesn't touch. That's exactly backwards. The office that can do the most should be held to the most, not the least. Our bill fixes it by putting the President and Vice President under the same rule as everyone else.
This is one of the most bipartisan ideas in the country, and Congress is finally moving—the bipartisan ETHICS Act and the Ban Congressional Stock Trading Act would make members divest or use a blind trust. But look closely and the reforms have been chopped into separate, weaker bills—one for Congress, a much softer one for the President, and yet another for the courts. Splitting it up is how good ideas get watered down and how the most powerful office ends up with the weakest rule.
We put Congress, the President, the Vice President, and senior officials under one clean standard—and we're clear that this isn't a shot at one party. Members of both parties have been caught, and voters of both parties want it fixed, roughly three to one. This is about the office, not the occupant.
We'll be straight about the one hard part. Applying a divestiture rule to a sitting President by ordinary law raises genuine separation-of-powers questions—it's part of why that §208 exemption exists in the first place, and some scholars argue the presidency can be fully bound only by the President's own choice or by a constitutional amendment. We think the conflict is serious enough to try by statute anyway, and we wrote the bill so that even if a court narrowed how it applies to the President, it would still bind the Vice President, all of Congress, and the senior executive branch without missing a beat. Start now, the fast way; add a constitutional backstop later if it's needed.
This is a discussion draft prepared for review by legislative counsel and for presentation to Members of Congress—proposed statutory language, not final legislative text. The authors are not attorneys.
Read the full bill, share it, and—most importantly—send it to your Representative. All three are formatted Word documents you can print or attach to an email.
This is a bill, so it can pass Congress and be signed into law—no state ratification required. The people to contact are your U.S. Representative and your two U.S. Senators. Not sure who they are?
A short, specific message from a constituent carries real weight—far more than a mass-produced form letter. Personal calls to a district office count even more.
Here's a letter you can use as a starting point. Make it your own—add a sentence about why this bothers you. Fill in the bracketed pieces, then paste it into your Representative's contact form or print and mail it.
Consider attaching the one-page summary or the full bill text (above) so your Representative's office has the actual language in hand.
Banning stock trading by officials who can move markets is one of the rare ideas that unites Americans across every line—backed by something like three out of four voters, in both parties. The opposition has never really been the public. It's the small group who benefit from the current setup, being asked to give up an advantage.