By SUZANNE DOWNING
Alaska Congressman Nick Begich has signed on as a cosponsor of the Stop Insider Trading Act, a House bill aimed at prohibiting members of Congress and their spouses from trading individual stocks while in office.
The legislation, H.R. 7008, is sponsored by Congressman Bryan Steil of Wisconsin and is moving through the House during the 119th Congress. It was introduced earlier this month and has recently been ordered to be reported, as amended, by the House Administration Committee, a key step toward a full House vote.
Begich publicly expressed support for the bill on social media, emphasizing that lawmakers should not be allowed to profit from access to non-public information and that public service should not be used for personal financial gain.
Under the Stop Insider Trading Act, members of Congress and their spouses would be barred from buying or selling individual stocks and certain other investments while the lawmaker is in office. Lawmakers would instead be required to divest those holdings or place them into qualified blind trusts.
The bill includes enforcement mechanisms requiring regular compliance certifications. Violations would trigger mandatory disgorgement of any profits to the US Treasury, along with potential civil penalties.
Supporters argue the bill addresses a long-standing credibility problem for Congress, where lawmakers vote on legislation that can directly affect the value of publicly traded companies.
Although the bill does not single out any individual lawmaker, the issue of congressional stock trading has frequently drawn attention to former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whose family’s investment returns have been widely analyzed using public financial disclosures.
According to multiple reports and financial tracking analyses from late 2025, when Pelosi first entered Congress in the late 1980s, the family reported stock holdings valued between roughly $610,000 and $785,000. Over nearly four decades, those investments have grown dramatically.
Analyses citing public disclosure data and tools such as Quiver Quantitative estimate that Pelosi-related stock investments have generated roughly $130 million in gains, representing an approximate return of 16,900%, far exceeding long-term benchmarks such as the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which gained about 2,300% over the same period.
More recent tracking beginning around 2014 shows portfolio returns in the range of 700 to 900% or higher, again substantially outperforming the broader market. Estimates of Pelosi’s current net worth generally fall between $250 million and $280 million, with a large share tied to long-term holdings in major technology companies such as NVIDIA, Microsoft, and Alphabet.
Pelosi has consistently stated that she does not personally manage stock trades, and that investments are handled by her spouse. Still, observers across the political spectrum argue that the appearance of impropriety undermines public trust regardless of who executes the trades.
Efforts to restrict congressional stock trading have surfaced repeatedly over the past decade but have often stalled despite bipartisan public support. Backers of H.R. 7008 say the current bill has stronger enforcement provisions than earlier proposals and arrives amid sustained voter frustration with Washington.
