WASHINGTON — Sen. Josh Hawley's bipartisan proposal to ban members of Congress from trading stock advanced through a Senate panel last week and stirred a dustup with the White House, just a week after U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly, R-Pa., was cited for an ethics violation following a years-long insider trading probe.

Hawley's bill was originally dubbed the Preventing Elected Leaders from Owning Securities and Investments (PELOSI) Act — a knock on former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who long opposed such bans before 2022 and whose husband, Paul, founded a venture capital investment firm and is a prolific trader.

But Hawley, R-Mo., reintroduced the legislation as the HONEST Act, which also covers future presidents and vice presidents, and gained Pelosi's support last week. The bill calls on members of Congress and future White House leaders to not hold any individual stocks and to divest from certain investments as a way to blunt potential conflicts of interest. Mutual funds, exchange traded funds and U.S. Treasury bills, notes or bonds are excluded.

Hawley, who has supported such bans for years, is joined by Democratic cosponsors Sens. Jon Ossoff of Georgia and Gary Peters of Michigan. But the bill, which Republicans on the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee roundly criticized, faces an uphill battle to reach the Senate floor for a full vote, with Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., describing the prospect as doubtful to CNN.

Debate over the bill — which prompted Trump to mock the conservative Hawley over social media — follows the end of a House Ethics Committee investigation into Kelly and his wife's trading of stock in steel company Cleveland Cliffs, which operates a plant in the congressman's district in Butler County.

The panel stopped short of saying the Kellys broke laws against insider trading or conflicts of interest. But lawmakers reprimanded the Republican for his lack of "candor" with investigators who were digging into whether Kelly and his wife used privileged information for personal financial gain.

A spokesman for Kelly reached Friday pointed to remarks the congressman gave The Meadville Tribune on Thursday, making the case that such ethics probes could dissuade people from running for office.

"At the end, they said there was nothing," he said, questioning the panel's finding along with an investigation into an investment in a "hometown steel mill" at unknown cost to taxpayers. "It's kind of weird what's going on. What investment are you allowed to make?"

The congressman did vote in favor of the STOCK Act, which bars members from trading securities based on privileged information, when it passed in 2012. He said he had not yet reviewed Hawley's proposal.

Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., has been on board with similar stock trading bans. In a fundraising email earlier this year he made the case that Republicans and Trump allies had gamed the system.

Before a vote on a budget that "rips health care away from 17 million Americans to fund tax breaks for the ultra-rich," GOP lawmakers "quietly dumped stocks to protect their own bottom line," Fetterman said.

"Then those stocks tanked — just like they knew they would," he added. "NO ONE serving in Congress should be able to cash in on insider info. The solution is clear. If we want to stop this madness, we need to ban congressional stock trading."

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said earlier this year that he supports a stock trading ban for members of Congress.

Sen. Dave McCormick, R-Pa., a former hedge fund CEO whose investments and wealth arose during a tough campaign against then-Sen. Bob Casey, said in May that he campaigned in support of a stock trading ban for lawmakers on Capitol Hill. The senator has also made significant investments in Bitcoin exchange-traded fund while serving on a Senate Banking Committee panel that covers digital assets.

"I don't think there's a reason for members of Congress to be trading stocks in the middle of the night, particularly given how much in the flow of information we are," he told WJAC-TV in Johnstown.

The senator said he planned to introduce legislation that would ban congressional stock trading "in a sensible way," that would give the "American people confidence (lawmakers are) not getting some special advantage that normal citizens don't get."

Before Hawley's bill cleared the Senate committee, Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., criticized the bill and took offense to Hawley mentioning billionaire members of Congress, including on the committee. Scott said he may be wealthy but he came from humble beginnings, joined the Navy, went to a cheap college and was successful in business.

"How many people in the audience want to be poor, how many of you don't want to make money?" he said. "The idea that we're going to attack people who make money is wrong."

Hawley responded that he didn't mean to go after people who were wealthy, but rather those who profited from their positions of power.

After the 8-7 vote, Trump blasted Hawley as "second-tier," claiming on Truth Social that he didn't think "real Republicans want to see their president, who has had unprecedented success, TARGETED."

Hawley responded to Trump's criticism by assuring reporters the ban would cover congressional members and the next leaders of the White House, not Trump and Vice President JD Vance. The president later said that "conceptually," he liked the proposal, CNN reported.

The nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center, which has called for reform including stiffer fines or penalties for those who violate the STOCK Act, applauded the Senate committee's approval of Hawley's bill, calling it "vital legislation that would help restore public trust in our government."

"Every day, members of Congress craft laws that directly impact the lives of Americans," Kedric Payne, CLC's vice president, said in a statement shared with the Post-Gazette. "At the same time, they are often aware of information before the broader public or that voters never learn about. As long as lawmakers are allowed to buy and sell stocks, these realities can create unfortunate incentives for some officials to prioritize personal profit over policymaking."

_____

© 2025 the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Visit www.post-gazette.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.