The Stop Insider Trading Act is also a voter ID bill
H.R. 7008 bans members of Congress from buying new stock. As of last week it also requires photo ID to vote. The two provisions were written for different problems and merged for a third reason.
The House Rules Committee met at 2:00 PM ET Monday, July 20, in H-313 to set the terms of floor debate for H.R. 7008, the “Stop Insider Trading Act.” The version it took up was not the bill the House Administration Committee reported on a 7–4 party-line vote in January (H. Rept. 119-479). It was Rules Committee Print 119-38, a 14-page text posted July 17 that carries a second, unrelated bill folded in as Section 3: the photo-ID voting requirements of H.R. 9368, the “Voter ID Act.” The seam is visible on page 8 of the print: line 7 ends the stock-trading section’s effective-date clause, and line 8 begins “SEC. 3. REQUIRING VOTERS TO PROVIDE PHOTO IDENTIFICATION.”
By evening the committee had set those terms: a closed rule, reported 8–4. Seventeen amendments were filed against the print — to cover the presidency and the courts, to restore the dropped free-ID grants, to replace the bill outright. None will get a floor vote. The one change that rides is the majority’s own manager’s amendment — a further carve-out, detailed below. Floor votes are expected Tuesday or Wednesday.
What Section 2 actually restricts
Section 2 covers members of Congress, their spouses, and dependent children — the print’s “covered individual” definition names those three categories and no others. Its operative sentence is one line: “no covered individual may purchase a covered investment,” meaning securities of publicly traded companies and comparable economic interests, with diversified funds, small-business interests, and certain trusts excluded. Selling is not banned: a member must file public notice of an intended sale “at least 7 calendar days, and no more than 14 calendar days” in advance with the House Clerk or Senate Secretary. A spouse or child who trades as “a function of the primary occupation” — a fund manager, say — is carved out, as is automatic dividend reinvestment.
What the text does not touch is the most-cited point: existing holdings are grandfathered. A member who already owns individual stock keeps it, collects the dividends, and can sell on seven days’ notice. Nothing in the print requires divesting a single share. Penalties for a violation are the greater of $2,000 or ten percent of the transaction, plus any net gain realized — payable personally, not from official allowances or campaign funds. The section takes effect 180 days after enactment.
What Section 3 adds
Section 3 amends the Help America Vote Act of 2002. In-person voters must present “a valid physical photo identification” — a state license or ID, a passport, a DoD or VA card, or a Tribal government ID with a photo and expiration date. A voter without one may cast a provisional ballot, which counts only if ID is presented within 3 days or the voter signs a state affidavit citing a religious objection to being photographed. Mail and absentee voters must include one of three things: a copy of a photo ID; the last four digits of their Social Security number plus an affidavit that they could not obtain an ID copy “after making reasonable efforts”; or a notarization. The requirement does not apply to absent uniformed-services voters (UOCAVA §107(1)) or to voters entitled to vote otherwise than in person under the Voting Accessibility for the Elderly and Handicapped Act (§3(b)(2)(B)(ii)).
On ID access, the print directs state and local officials to ensure, “to the extent practicable,” public access to digital imaging devices — printers, copiers, scanners — in government buildings so voters can copy an ID. It does not say free, and it is qualified. Section 3 takes effect 90 days after enactment — 90 days before the stock rules do.
What the merge left out
The standalone Voter ID Act contained its own Section 3: a grant program paying states and Tribal governments that provide qualifying photo ID “without charge” to anyone who attests “under penalty of perjury that the individual cannot afford to pay the fee” (H.R. 9368 as reported, pp. 9–10). Rules Committee Print 119-38 does not carry that section forward — the word “grant” does not appear anywhere in the print. The ID requirements survived the merge; the money addressing the most common objection to them — that IDs cost money some voters don’t have — did not. The committee’s own comparative print shows the differences between the two reported bills and the combined text. By Monday afternoon the omission had drawn a direct response: an amendment from Rep. Johnny Olszewski (D-MD) to restore the grant program. The rule did not make it in order (see below).
How two bills became one
The stock-trading ban and the voter ID bill each had their own path to the floor, and they crossed in late June. Members of the House Freedom Caucus had been blocking procedural rule votes since roughly June 23, after the Senate failed to act on voter ID following the House’s 218–213 passage of the SAVE America Act on February 11. Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX), the caucus’s policy chair, had publicly tied his support for House rules to three demands — SAVE, the border bill H.R. 2, and “a ban in congressional stock trading” — bundling the two issues himself before leadership combined the bills.
The week of July 13, GOP leadership attached H.R. 9368’s requirements to H.R. 7008 as Section 3. Punchbowl News described the result as containing “a completely unrelated voter ID provision” and called the package “largely symbolic,” with no real path to becoming law in this form. Bloomberg Government’s bill analysis attributes the merger to “a strategic maneuver by House Freedom Caucus members” who had disrupted the floor schedule over voter ID while separately campaigning for a stock-trading vote. The practical effect: a second standalone voter ID bill, likely to meet the same Senate fate as SAVE, instead rides on a bill with bipartisan cosponsors and a presidential endorsement.
What was on the table
By Monday afternoon, fifteen amendments were listed on the Rules Committee’s own tracking page for H.R. 7008 — twelve Democratic, three Republican — and the list grew throughout the day. By evening it stood at seventeen: thirteen Democratic, four Republican.
Three would replace the bill outright. Reps. Joe Morelle (D-NY) and Seth Magaziner (D-RI) each submitted a substitute swapping in H.R. 6731, the Restore Trust in Government Act, whose stated purpose is to prohibit “Members of Congress, the President, Vice President, and their spouses and dependents from owning or trading stocks” — both broader in who it covers and stricter in what it bans than H.R. 7008. Magaziner’s version also adds Supreme Court justices; Morelle’s separately bans congressional participation in prediction markets and would accept several forms of voter ID rather than the print’s list. Magaziner filed a second, revised substitute swapping in H.R. 5106, the Restore Trust in Congress Act — the bipartisan ownership ban sponsored by Rep. Chip Roy, with 140 cosponsors as of July 20 — meaning a Democratic amendment would replace the GOP leadership bill with a Freedom Caucus Republican’s stricter one. On the same question, Rep. Val Hoyle (D-OR) submitted an amendment that would add the President and Vice President — with their spouses and dependent children — to the covered-individuals list.
The coverage question drew a Republican entry too: Rep. Warren Davidson (R-OH) submitted an amendment extending the stock restrictions to “judicial officers, as well as all Senior Executive Service positions and above, including the President, the Vice President, any cabinet secretary, and any political appointee” — the broadest coverage expansion on the table, and proof the exemption objection is not solely a Democratic one. A second Hoyle amendment would extend the restrictions to privately traded stock. A late entry from Rep. Maggie Goodlander (D-NH) went further still, inserting the text of the Public Service Accountability Act — a ban on owning and trading individual stocks, and on prediction-market participation, for senior officials in all three branches of government.
Section 3 drew fire from both directions. Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D-PA) submitted one amendment widening the accepted-ID list to match any current state voter-ID list, and another striking the mail-ballot photocopy, notarization, or affidavit requirements entirely. Rep. Johnny Olszewski (D-MD) — who also signed on to the Morelle and Magaziner substitutes — filed three of his own: same-day registration with provisional voting for ID-holders, free IDs for eligible voters, and one that restores the grant program the merge dropped — grants to states providing photo IDs without charge, the standalone bill’s Section 3 that Print 119-38 left out. From the Republican side, Rep. Julie Fedorchak (R-ND) would exempt states that do not require voter registration under the National Voter Registration Act at the time of enactment — her own North Dakota is the only state with no voter registration at all. Rounding out the list: a third Houlahan amendment moving implementation to one year after enactment, a Magaziner amendment requiring the ethics office to publish violation fines online, and one from Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) with nothing to do with either subject — barring member pay during a government shutdown, identical to H.R. 5891.
What the rule allowed
The rule, reported by a record vote of 8–4 on the evening of July 20, settled the question: it is a closed rule. No amendment gets a floor vote. The single exception is the majority’s own: a manager’s amendment from Rep. Bryan Steil (R-WI), the House Administration chair — the only entry on the committee’s tracking page listed as “Considered as Adopted” — which the rule folds into the base text (“Rules Committee Print 119-38, modified by the amendment printed in part B of the Rules Committee report”). It revises the occupational exception to also except “employment compensation received by Member spouses or dependent children” — a further carve-out from the trading ban, not a tightening of it. The other sixteen amendments — both substitutes, every coverage expansion, the grant restoration — were not made in order. The rule provides one hour of general debate and one motion to recommit.
On the record
“It doesn’t do that. Not at all.” — Rep. Joseph Morelle (D-NY), ranking member, House Administration, on the bill’s title. He has separately called it “so filled with holes it would make Swiss cheese blush.” Source
“All that bill does is allows you to keep your stock, so you’ll even be more encouraged by that to make more votes that are obliging to your stock portfolio.” — Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN), who told Roll Call he is leaning toward opposing the bill.
“If Republicans were serious about cleaning up corruption in this town, they would start at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.” — House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, on the exclusion of the presidency, in remarks reported by HNGN.
The math
The House sits at 218 Republicans, 212 Democrats, 1 independent, and 4 vacancies, per the House Press Gallery as of July 20 — a near-party-line margin that leaves Speaker Johnson little room on a bill most Democrats now oppose over Section 3. H.R. 7008 has 93 cosponsors, all but two Republican (Reps. Ed Case and Josh Riley are the Democratic cosponsors); its Senate companion, S. 4134, has 11 GOP cosponsors and none from the Democratic side as of introduction.
On the underlying question, the polling is lopsided: 86% of Americans, across party lines, support a ban on members of Congress trading individual stocks, per Daily Signal’s reporting. The same reporting cites a Common Cause count of 13,324 congressional stock trades worth $635.6 million in 2025; a separate Yahoo Finance/AP-sourced figure puts 2025 trading at 14,000-plus trades and $720 million — the two don’t reconcile against a single methodology, so both are cited here rather than averaged. The 2012 STOCK Act, the law this bill amends, caps late-filing fines at $200 and has produced zero prosecutions in its history.
The exemption at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
President Trump called for a stock-trading ban in his February 24 State of the Union, drawing rare bipartisan applause. H.R. 7008 does not cover the presidency. On June 3, Sen. Elizabeth Warren questioned Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent about the president’s own trading activity — more than 3,400 trades in Q1 2026, by her office’s count, including an Nvidia purchase of up to $1 million on January 6, the week before the administration eased export controls that let Nvidia sell chips to China, and purchases in Robinhood and Bank of New York Mellon ahead of an April 6 Treasury announcement that both firms would run the new “Trump accounts” program. Bessent’s response was that an outside manager executes the trades and that Congress should address its own conduct first. Neither the House bill nor the Senate companion would apply to the trades described in that hearing. That question reached the Rules Committee from both parties — Hoyle’s amendment, both substitutes, Republican Warren Davidson’s SES-and-above amendment, and Goodlander’s three-branch ban would each have extended the bill to the presidency. The closed rule made none of them in order. The bill goes to the floor with the exemption intact.
What the record establishes — and what it does not
The public documents establish that the print retains the short title “Stop Insider Trading Act”; that it combines modified provisions of H.R. 7008 and H.R. 9368; that the photo-ID requirements begin on page 8; that the standalone bill’s ID-grant program is absent from the combined text; that the purchase ban leaves existing holdings in place; that no office outside Congress is named; what each of the seventeen submitted amendments would do; and that the rule reported July 20 is closed — self-executing the manager’s amendment and giving the other sixteen no vote. They do not establish why the two subjects were combined — the reporting above attributes that to a leadership accommodation of the Freedom Caucus, and is cited as such — or whether the Senate will take the bill up at all.
Status: the Rules Committee reported a closed rule for H.R. 7008 by a record vote of 8–4 on the evening of July 20 — no amendments in order beyond the self-executed manager’s amendment. A rule vote and final passage are expected in the July 21–22 window per the majority leader’s published schedule. This entry will be updated once the roll call is in the Clerk’s record. Updated 20 JUL 2026, 8:00 PM ET: closed rule reported; amendment count 15 → 17.