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Insider and several other news organizations have identified 76 members of Congress who've recently failed to properly report their financial trades as mandated by the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act of 2012, also known as the STOCK Act. Congress passed the law a decade ago to combat insider trading and conflicts of interest among their own members and force lawmakers to be more transparent about their personal financial dealings....

In a little-noticed brief filed last summer, lawyers for the House of Representatives claimed that an SEC investigation of congressional insider trading should be blocked on principle, because lawmakers and their staff are constitutionally protected from such inquiries given the nature of their work. The legal team led by Kerry W. Kircher, who was appointed House General Counsel by Speaker John Boehner in 2011, claimed that the insider trading probe violated the separation of powers between the legislative and executive branch. In 2012, members of Congress patted themselves on the back for passing the STOCK Act, a bill meant to...

President Obama signed a bill that eliminates a financial disclosure requirement for some government employees, the White House announced. Here's the White House's statement: Statement by the Press Secretary on S. 716 On Monday, April 15, 2013, the President signed into law: S. 716, which eliminates the requirement in the STOCK Act to make available on official websites the financial disclosure forms of employees of the executive and legislative branches other than the President, the Vice President, Members of and candidates for Congress, and several specified Presidentially nominated and Senate-confirmed officers; and delays until January 1, 2014, the date by...

Congress this week approved a bill to free thousands of federal government employees from having to disclose their financial dealings online, rushing the bill through the Senate late Thursday and through the House on Friday. But the push to undo the online reporting requirement is proving to be controversial. The National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) said that posting all of that information online posed a national security risk. But the Sunlight Foundation, an open government group, said releasing staffers from online disclosure eviscerates part of last year’s Stock Act, designed to stop insider trading by federal officials.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama called on Wednesday for stricter controls on lawmakers to confront "the corrosive influence" of money in Washington as he signed into law an insider trading ban he said was needed to help restore trust in the U.S. government. The Democrat, who is running for re-election in November, said the STOCK Act he signed at the White House made plain that members of Congress using non-public information to improve their personal investment portfolios were breaking the law. Enforcement of the core stock trading disclosure provisions will begin in July. He also called for more restrictions,...

Last Thursday, the US Senate passed the STOCK Act, legislation that would ban members of congress from insider trading. From CBS News: Members of Congress are already subject to insider trading laws. But it is currently within the law for a lawmaker to buy a company’s stock after learning, for example, that an upcoming bill will grant that company a large government contract. The ultimate fate of the STOCK (Stop Trading On Congressional Knowledge) Act, which comes in the wake of a “60 Minutes” story on potential congressional insider trading, remains unclear – though its prospects are relatively good. Passage...

In a strange and unexpected twist, the Republican leader in the House of Representatives is now blocking progress on a bill that would definitively outlaw insider trading [cnbc explains] by federal lawmakers. The Republican sponsor of the bill in the House, Financial Services Chairman Spencer Bachus of Alabama, had scheduled a markup of the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act for next week. But on Wednesday, Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia cancelled the markup session. Cantor reportedly said he blocked the bill to give Congress more time to examine the issue. Critics of the move, however, fear that...

With the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee set to begin congressional insider trading hearings today, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, whose husband trades stock options, has proposed a bill that would legalize, not ban, insider trading by members of Congress. “This is just nuts,” says UCLA Law Professor Stephen Bainbridge. The controversy surrounding Sen. Gillibrand’s version of the STOCK (Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge) Act involves a curious omission of a conjunction that CNBC.com editor John Carney calls “shocking” and a “scandal” because it would “gut the law” entirely. In Sen. Scott Brown’s version of the bill, the law reads:...