Luna files discharge petition in push to ban member stock trading
Published in Political News
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna on Tuesday launched a bid to circumvent House leadership and force a vote on legislation that would ban members from trading stocks, making good on an earlier threat to file a discharge petition.
The Florida Republican first said in September that she’d give Speaker Mike Johnson until the end of the month to bring a bill to the floor, but then punted when the House went out of session and federal funding lapsed.
When the government shutdown ended in November, Luna again said she would file the discharge petition, which could eventually force a vote if a majority of House members sign on. She announced the move Tuesday on X, citing a lack of movement from leadership.
“We’re tired of the partisan games,” Luna said in a video that also featured Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., an ally in the stock-ban fight. “This is the most bipartisan thing in U.S. history, and it’s time that the House of Representatives listens to the American people.”
As of Tuesday afternoon, Burchett and Luna were the lone signatories.
The discharge petition sets up yet another showdown between rank-and-file Republicans and their leadership. Last month, the House voted in favor of a bill that would compel the Justice Department to release certain files related to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein after a discharge effort led by Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky. That push succeeded despite the open opposition of President Donald Trump and Johnson (though Trump officially changed his position days before the measure was set to pass).
And earlier this year, Luna led a separate discharge petition aimed at allowing proxy voting for recent parents, though Johnson cut a deal with her and quashed the effort.
Luna’s stock trading push, if successful, would bring to the floor a consensus proposal introduced by Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, forcing members to go on the record on an issue that has broad public support. The perception that members are trading on inside information they glean from their jobs — which is already illegal, according to a rarely enforced 2012 federal law that also established stock reporting requirements — hurts the public’s confidence in Congress, advocates of the proposal say.
Roy’s bill was introduced in September with the support of a bipartisan group of lawmakers that includes Reps. Seth Magaziner, D-R.I.; Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash.; Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa.; Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.; Luna and Burchett.
That legislation, which has 102 co-sponsors, would ban members, their spouses and dependents from owning or trading individual stocks. Unlike some other proposals, it would not allow blind trusts, and it would apply only to Congress, not the president or vice president. Enforcement would fall to the House and Senate Ethics committees, and fines would be tracked on a public website, according to the bill.
“The clock is now running,” Roy and Magaziner said Tuesday in a joint statement. “If leadership does not move quickly to put forward a strong ban on congressional stock trading, the members of the body will act.”
In November, the House Administration Committee held a hearing on congressional stock trading. But the consensus group of lawmakers pushing the bill have continued to call for a markup or a vote on the floor. As of Tuesday, no markup had been scheduled.
“This place is broken, and it’s a complete open sewer. Let’s at least show America we’re trying to do something right,” Burchett said in Luna’s video.
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