(Yahoo! Finance) - One of the few bipartisan moments in Tuesday night's State of the Union address was President Trump's call for action on congressional stock trading.
"Pass the Stop Insider Trading Act without delay," Trump declared, to "ensure that members of Congress cannot corruptly profit from using insider information."
The reaction was notable: The president expressed surprise at the bipartisan applause he received as the cameras cut to Sen. Elizabeth Warren clapping.
The moment was a reflection of public sentiment that overwhelmingly favors a ban. But there was little immediate evidence that Tuesday's moment moved the needle — especially on the push for an all-out ban on lawmakers owning and trading stocks.
The specific measure Trump endorsed falls short of a ban, adding to a stalemate over varied approaches to the issue that had ground debate to a halt long before Trump took the dais on Tuesday.
The effort "had some momentum," Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette, acting vice president at the Project on Government Oversight, said in an interview, "but then politics got in the way."
"It's one of those things that is super popular to campaign on and to talk about in public venues, but then when the rubber hits the road and Congress actually has to do something meaningful about it, that's where you see how people really feel," he added.
His group and others have been pushing for a ban on trading for years. The issue burst into public consciousness when lawmakers were revealed to be unloading stocks before the extent of the coming COVID-19 pandemic was widely known.
Since then, public opinion has firmly held in favor of a ban, with one poll finding a whopping 86% of Americans support the idea.
Yet it hasn't slowed trading.
A recent Motley Fool analysis found more than 14,000 trades in 2025 spread among 140 lawmakers. It represented a total volume of over $720 million in trades that, the report notes, "tend to beat the market."
Kedric Payne, vice president at the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center, said this issue is "one of the top problems Congress is going to have to face."
A trio of bills
Congress has seen no shortage of proposals, with a trio of different approaches emerging in recent months that have split lawmakers into factions.
The bill endorsed by Trump and popular with Republicans is called the Stop Insider Trading Act. It's a partial ban that would prohibit lawmakers and their families from purchasing new stocks, but would allow ownership of individual stocks and require a public notice seven days before any stock sales.
That bill has 93 co-sponsors, 91 of whom are Republican.
Many Democrats, meanwhile, have recently migrated to a bill called the Restore Trust in Government Act, which would institute a total ban on trading and ownership of individual stocks for lawmakers and their families and include the president and vice president for good measure.
"That's a non-starter for a lot of people for, you know, obvious reasons," Hedtler-Gaudette noted.
Indeed, Trump has reacted furiously to any measure that would apply to him. That bill currently has 66 co-sponsors, all Democrats, including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.
A compromise approach with significant bipartisan support is called the Restore Trust in Congress Act. Unveiled to much fanfare last September, it would also institute a ban on trading and ownership of individual stocks, but only for lawmakers.
Although it has 128 co-sponsors — 98 Democrats and 30 Republicans — energy behind it has waned as the focus has shifted to more partisan bills in recent weeks, especially on the Republican side.
Florida Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, as one example, was an original co-sponsor of the Restore Trust in Congress Act and even put forth a discharge petition to force a vote on the issue.
But that effort hasn't seen a new signatory in more than six weeks, and Luna herself has shifted her focus to the Republican-favored bill. She posted after the president's mention that it was "The ONLY issue from the entire SOTU that got both Democrat and Republican members out of their seats."
Yet even with the divides, 215 lawmakers have signed on to at least one of the measures, according to a Yahoo Finance count.
Rep. Josh Riley, a Democrat representing upstate New York, is the only lawmaker to have signed on to all three approaches.
He previously said that he supports a full ban on trading but signed on to the GOP measure because that approach "is a hell of a lot better than doing nothing."
The goal of 'restoring Americans' trust in Congress'
Despite the lack of optimism for action, advocates for a ban told Yahoo Finance that Trump raising the issue could be a good sign.
In the speech, Trump singled out Nancy Pelosi, who has come under scrutiny for her husband's trades, though trading has been a bipartisan problem.
Pelosi responded on CNN by telling Trump to "look at your own self."
The bitter back-and-forth between these two leaders mirrors the divides over the stock trading issue.
Rep. Brian Steil, a Wisconsin Republican spearheading the Republican bill, has said his approach is the only realistic one and said following Trump's speech that it "begins the process of restoring Americans' trust in Congress."
But on the other side, advocates for a full ban have said that a partial ban doesn't address the underlying conflicts of interest that arise from simultaneously owning individual stocks and writing laws.
A series of good-government groups recently sent a letter to Congress that said the bill Trump endorsed is "a poor substitute for the bipartisan bill" noting it wouldn't ban members of Congress from "making decisions that would affect the value of the stocks they hold."
"I just sincerely hope that the public is not confused," said Payne, whose group signed onto the recent letter.
Instead of stopping insider trading, he said, passing the partial ban would "allow it to flourish."
By Ben Werschkul · Washington Correspondent
