Congressional stock-trading ban passes House despite Democrat dissent

[0:00] Some have been waiting longer than others for this to move through. [0:04] The House passed that sweeping set of restrictions on stock trades by lawmakers and their spouses. [0:10] The Stop Insider Trading Act, as you heard, passed by a 232-198 margin. [0:16] More than a dozen Democrats also getting on board. [0:20] You can see this from the Nancy Pelosi stock trader tracker talking about this. [0:25] The bill now goes to the Senate. [0:27] Most Democrats say the measure, though, passed doesn't go far enough, saying it does not include sellback requirements. [0:33] The Senate action on congressional stock trading still uncertain. [0:36] The chamber not scheduled a vote on its own version of legislation, which seeks to prevent not only members of Congress and their families, [0:43] but also the president and vice president and their families from owning and trading individual stocks. [0:48] Let's be joined right now here on Live Now from Fox by Chris Joseph, founder of the investing app Autopilot, [0:54] and also the creator of the popular Nancy Pelosi tracker following stock trades of members of Congress. [1:02] We've talked before. [1:03] Does this feel like progress? [1:06] Was your heart racing last night? [1:07] I think it's definitely momentum. [1:10] You know, after talking about this stuff publicly, after building an app to, you know, copy trade them since 2021, there has been no movement. [1:18] We've seen bills that have been introduced. [1:19] We've seen bills that have stalled. [1:21] This is the first bill that has actually been voted on where you can kind of actually see where people stand. [1:26] The unfortunate part, though, I think is what Representative Chip Roy said, where they added kind of two votes into one. [1:33] I ideally would have wanted it to just be purely a stock trading ban vote, where I think you would have gotten more bipartisan support. [1:41] You throw in the voter ID registration requirements, and obviously that's going to make it more complicated and make it harder to pass. [1:48] And now, I guess, though, at the end of the day, the ball is in the Senate's court. [1:52] Will they take up the vote? [1:53] Will they do it? [1:54] The midterms are coming up soon. [1:56] There's no guarantee that Republicans will own the Senate majority after the midterms. [2:01] So the clock is ticking regardless. [2:04] Yeah, and some are saying that's part of the poison pill that it might not get through the Senate when they add that kind of voter ID portion to it. [2:11] Thomas Massey, also the Republican from Kentucky, outgoing congressman, saying Congress is not serious. [2:17] We're voting on stock trading ban for members of Congress. [2:19] But Republicans added voter ID to the legislation, not to get Dems to vote for voter ID, but get them to vote against the stock trading ban so they can use it in the November elections. [2:31] How much is this happening with them playing politics around this? [2:35] Do you think that makes this less significant? [2:38] I think they are playing politics, though. [2:42] So whether it's less significant or more significant, I think the reality is that representative is right. [2:48] You know, we running these social media accounts for years, one of the downsides of it is there's a lot of clickbaity stuff. [2:56] There's a lot of headline stuff. [2:58] So what these politicians can do tomorrow and what they were doing throughout the day today is they can say, oh, my goodness, you know, 200 Democrats voted against the bill to ban congressional stock trading. [3:08] That sounds terrible on paper. [3:10] That sounds like that's going to get a lot of headlines, a lot of clicks and, you know, make people mad about it. [3:15] But the truth is, you know, to be fair to some of these Democrats that voted against it, they've come out and said, we are in support of a ban on congressional stock trading, but we have to vote against this because we don't agree with the voter ID requirements. [3:27] So I think there is politics being played. [3:31] But at the end of the day, though, you know, we still do want a ban to get through, and they should continue pushing that. [3:37] They should just make amendments in the Senate and get the stock trading ban through. [3:42] And one of the components of this is lawmakers would still have to disclose stock sales within 7 to 14 days. [3:49] You're very intimately familiar with how lawmakers trade stocks. [3:53] Is that enough transparency? [3:55] Is there any workarounds that everyone tries to gain an edge with that they might take on? [3:59] No, honestly, I don't think so. [4:02] I think the bill that the Republicans set forth is pretty reasonable. [4:06] You know, like you've been saying earlier, the Democrats, they not only don't disagree with, you know, the voter ID side, they also support a bill called the Honest Act, which would force full-on divestments and also require the president and the vice president to be included in the ban. [4:22] I don't think forced divestments is healthy. [4:25] I think that actually will bring in kind of politicians that don't necessarily have a business background, which I don't think is a good idea. [4:32] I think they should still be allowed to own individual stocks. [4:34] They just can't buy any future ones. [4:36] And then on top of that, they should be forced to tell you when they're going to sell so that they're not selling right before some legislation comes in. [4:44] It's still tricky. [4:46] It's not an easy answer. [4:47] It's not the – but no one's going to be the happiest. [4:49] It's not a win-win-win for everyone. [4:50] You've got to meet in the middle at some point. [4:55] Yeah, compromise is very important. [4:57] I do want to ask you because one of the most notorious for this stock trading for lawmakers and kind of goes back to the name of what the social media handle is, Nancy Pelosi, she voted against the House bill banning members of costs from Congress passing purchasing individual stocks. [5:15] Do you think she even weighed it? [5:17] Do you think she considered voting for this, going in favor of the Republicans to pass this stock trading ban? [5:24] Yeah, this is a great question because we were chatting about this with our team. [5:26] Like, imagine if it didn't include the voter ID and she couldn't have had the excuse to say, oh, I voted against it because I don't believe in the voter ID. [5:35] I don't know. [5:36] I have a feeling that she would have voted against the Republicans no matter what, even if they had the voter ID part or not. [5:43] I don't think that she, deep down, wants this bill to pass. [5:47] Maybe she does now because she's about to retire and, you know, go live on a beach somewhere and she's already made her money. [5:53] But I think that – I think she wants the Democrat one and she wants to go after Trump and kind of leave on the high horse of that. [6:00] I don't think it will happen, but it is a little bit funny to see Nancy Pelosi vote against it. [6:06] Yeah, and obviously no surprise, no shocker that she would vote against it in any way. [6:11] It's almost too fitting that she does. [6:13] I do want to ask you, because you run that account, you founded Autopilot, which mirrors some of the major lawmakers, but also people not necessarily in Congress. [6:23] We were listening to the House floor yesterday. [6:25] The Republican from Iowa, Zach Dunn, had this bite. [6:28] I want to play it real quickly. [6:29] Here's the reality. [6:31] Most members of Congress are not trading stock on the job. [6:36] Most of them are not day traders. [6:37] They're in their districts. [6:38] But the reality is true. [6:39] Thirty-five members of Congress beat the S&P 500 last year. [6:44] As my colleague on the other side of the aisle just highlighted, one of the biggest stock trader wins in this is an app called Autopilot that tracks the trades of Nancy Pelosi and her husband. [6:56] In the last three years alone, their stock trades have gone up more than 200 percent. [7:01] Nobody believes that this is just Washington being smarter than Wall Street. [7:06] Everyone recognizes that somebody here is getting ahead while the rest of America is falling behind. [7:12] All right, Zach Nunn there, the congressman from Iowa shouting out Autopilot. [7:17] How much do you think Autopilot, the social media account, had influence or moved this momentum in a way? [7:25] And can you speak to the evolution? [7:27] Because you've been involved in this for quite some time. [7:29] I started this stuff when I was 25, 26. [7:34] If you were to ask me would I be a nerd, an expert on politician stock trading, I would have said absolutely not. [7:41] But I think like seeing it start from an account to a TikTok to an interview to, you know, now we got $500 million trading alongside Pelosi by 140,000 Americans. [7:52] I'd say I'm flattered, I'm humbled by it. [7:55] I think it is a little bit bittersweet because, you know, he is right. [7:58] We've been using this as a way to allow people to get in on the action because we thought if there's a way for people to have some skin in the game in the topic, it will push the momentum. [8:08] It'll push the movement even further. [8:10] And I think there is truth to that. [8:12] If there wasn't a way for the average everyday person to profit from this, I don't think it would have been as big. [8:22] I think allowing people to get in and seeing these numbers and just talk about, like, why the heck is there an app with the slogan, invest like a politician, one of the top charting apps on the app store? [8:34] If you see something like that, I think it makes you raise your eyebrows and be like, okay, there actually is some, you know, this shouldn't be a thing. [8:40] But it is so obvious that it is. [8:42] We probably should cut it at the root and, you know, stop that before it gets even bigger. [8:47] Yeah, there's an app for that and it is yours. [8:49] Is there anything we're missing in this conversation? [8:52] Is there any loophole weakness or component of this bill that we should be talking about more? [8:57] There is. [8:57] There is. [8:58] So I don't think anyone has really talked about it. [9:00] But if a, and this actually has something to do with Pelosi, if a spouse or a dependent works in the financial industry and they're a hedge fund manager or wealth manager, they will still be allowed to trade stocks. [9:13] They won't be allowed to trade their spouse's stocks. [9:18] But if their job is to trade individual stocks, they will still be allowed to do that. [9:23] And I think, like, that is an interesting little carve out where, you know, through that bill, remember, it not only bans the person in Congress, but it depends the dependents and it bans the spouses. [9:33] It is the caveat, the asterisk is it won't ban the spouse and the dependent if they already have a job in stock trading, which is a loophole. [9:43] But again, you know, you've got to compromise somewhere. [9:45] I don't know how you can tell your husband or your wife you've got to quit your job because I'm a politician now. [9:49] It's just hard. [9:50] Yeah, that is so very true, especially if you're just a member of Congress. [9:53] You only got a couple of years in that role for the time being. [9:57] Who polices these rules? [9:58] If this does get through the Senate and potentially to Trump's desk, is it Congress holding Congress accountable? [10:04] Isn't that where we started at? [10:05] Yeah, yeah, it's the House Ethics Committee. [10:08] And I mean, that will be a whole nother can of worms of, you know, whether it does get through, what do you do? [10:14] How do you police that? [10:15] Like, what if a politician does make a trade? [10:17] And, you know, what if their fines are, I think in the fine that they want to pass, it's 10% of the entire transaction. [10:22] But what if, you know, they're slinging around millions of dollars and they make 80% gains and they'll gladly pay a 10% fine on that. [10:31] I don't, I hope it doesn't get to that point because then we just run into the same can of worms. [10:35] But we'll see. [10:37] We'll see. [10:38] I don't know how they do police it. [10:39] It's a step forward. [10:41] We'll see how much of a step and if it continues through the Senate. [10:44] Chris, thank you again. [10:45] I appreciate your time and your insight here on Live Now. [10:48] Great. [10:48] Thank you. [10:49] Thank you for having me on, Andy.