House Democrats have released their long-awaited bill to ban stock trading by members of Congress, senior government officials, and U.S. Supreme Court justices, with the legislation seeking to cut conflicts of interest, increase transparency around enforcement, and make penalties for noncompliance more painful.
The text of the bill (pdf), titled “Combatting Financial Conflicts of Interest in Government Act,” seeks to ban a range of officials—in Congress, the executive branch, the Supreme Court, and at the Federal Reserve—from trading or owning investments in instruments including stocks, commodities, futures, and cryptocurrencies.
The draft legislation would force individuals covered by the measure to divest themselves of these holdings or put them in a qualified blind trust….