Senators strike bipartisan deal for a ban on stock trading by members of Congress

• A bipartisan group of senators reached a new agreement on legislation that would ban members of Congress from trading stocks.
• The deal would forbid members of Congress their spouses and dependent children, as well as the president and vice president, from purchasing and selling stocks while in office.
• The proposal is the latest chapter in a years-long saga to limit lawmakers' ability to play the stock market. Ethics experts say their access to information that is not available to the public gives them an unfair investing advantage.

A bipartisan group of senators on Wednesday launched a renewed effort to ban members of Congress from trading stock.

"Congress should not be here to make a buck," Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said at a press conference Wednesday on Capitol Hill. "There is no reason why members of Congress ought to be profiting off of the information that only they get."

The proposal is the latest chapter in a years-long saga in Congress to pass regulations that limit lawmakers' ability to buy and sell stocks. And it will be the first of these to get formal consideration by a Senate committee — in this case the Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee on July 24.

Ethics experts say that members of Congress have access to so much information in the course of their work that is not available to the public, that they have an unfair investing advantage.

Wednesday's amendment to an existing stock trading ban bill would immediately forbid members of Congress, the president and the vice president from purchasing stocks and other covered investments. It would also give lawmakers 90 days to sell their stocks.

Sens. Hawley, Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., Jeff Merkley, D-Or., and Gary Peters, D-Mi. negotiated and announced