Restore Trust in Congress Act
HB5106, titled the Restore Trust in Congress Act, would prohibit Members of Congress, their spouses, and dependent children from owning or trading covered investments while they are in federal service. Covered investments include securities, commodities, futures, and comparable economic interests acquired through synthetic means such as options, warrants, and derivatives. The bill also requires divestiture of existing covered investments within specified deadlines, generally 180 days for current covered individuals and 90 days for those who later become covered individuals.
The bill creates a new subchapter in chapter 131 of title 5, United States Code, to define the prohibited assets, set compliance rules, and establish enforcement mechanisms. It allows certain exceptions, including diversified mutual funds, U.S. Treasury securities, state and municipal bonds, compensation earned by a spouse or dependent child from their employer, interests in small businesses, certain real-estate holding LLCs for a member’s personal residence, and Alaska Native settlement stock. It also provides procedures for certificates of divestiture, limited exemptions for family trusts and occupational trading by spouses or dependent children, extensions for illiquid or restricted assets, and public reporting of penalties by ethics offices.
If enacted, the bill would significantly expand federal ethics restrictions for lawmakers by barring personal ownership and trading of most marketable investments by Members of Congress and extending those restrictions to spouses and dependent children in many circumstances. It would amend title 5 of the U.S. Code by adding a new subchapter governing definitions, divestment obligations, ethics-office oversight, and penalties, while also tying the new restrictions to the Internal Revenue Code’s certificate-of-divestiture framework. The measure would affect congressional financial disclosures, asset management, and the handling of family-held or trust-held investments, while preserving some common exceptions for diversified funds and certain non-speculative assets.
The available context shows the bill being introduced with a bipartisan and ideologically mixed group of cosponsors, suggesting broad rhetorical support for the goal of restoring public trust and reducing perceived conflicts of interest. Because there are no committee transcripts or recorded votes in the provided material, there is no direct evidence of floor debate or formal opposition in this dataset. Overall, the bill appears to be framed positively as an ethics and anti-corruption measure.
The main points of contention likely concern how far the prohibition should extend and how workable the divestment rules would be in practice. Potentially controversial features include the inclusion of spouses and dependent children, the treatment of trusts, the limited exceptions for family trusts and occupational trading, and whether the 180-day and 90-day divestment deadlines are sufficient for compliance. Another likely issue is enforcement: the bill authorizes a 10 percent penalty and profit disgorgement, and it requires public disclosure of fines, which may raise concerns about privacy, administrative burden, and the scope of ethics-office authority.