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Prohibits senior federal officials from trading stocks and strengthens financial disclosure requirements for Congress and executive branch leaders.
OUR POSITIONThe STOCK Act 2.0 does something straightforward and long overdue: it bans stock trading for senior government officials and tightens the financial disclosure rules that are supposed to keep those officials accountable to the public they serve. Scripture is unambiguous that leaders who exploit their positions for personal gain corrupt the institutions they are meant to steward. Exodus 18:21 calls for rulers who hate dishonest gain, and Proverbs 29:4 warns that a ruler who takes bribes tears a nation apart. This bill addresses exactly that vulnerability.
The documented problem is real. Senior officials routinely hold and trade individual stocks in industries they directly regulate or fund. Whatever their intentions, the structural conflict is indefensible. A legislator voting on defense appropriations while trading defense stocks, or a regulator overseeing pharmaceutical approvals while holding pharmaceutical positions, cannot credibly claim to be placing the public interest first. The STOCK Act 2.0 closes that gap by prohibiting the trading, not merely by requiring disclosure after the fact.
The bill also improves the disclosure system itself, requiring certain senior officials to report payments received from the federal government and strengthening the filing requirements for Members of Congress, congressional staff, and very senior employees. Transparency without teeth is insufficient, but transparency with a trading ban creates genuine accountability. Both components together represent a meaningful structural reform rather than a symbolic gesture.
Conservative Christians have every reason to support this bill on principled grounds. The biblical vision of just governance is one in which leaders are servants, not beneficiaries. Public office is a trust, and the exploitation of that trust for financial advantage is not a gray area. Demanding structural safeguards against self-dealing is not an ideological position; it is a moral one, consistent with the long Christian tradition of holding governing authorities to a higher standard of conduct.
The American Council recognizes that the bill's scope is targeted rather than comprehensive. It applies to a defined class of senior officials and addresses stock trading specifically, not every dimension of ethics in government. But targeted reforms that are direct and enforceable do more good than sweeping reforms that exist only on paper. This bill deserves support precisely because its effect on the named class of officials is substantive and real.
HB3779 was introduced in the House on June 5, 2025, and referred to four committees simultaneously: Oversight and Government Reform, House Administration, the Judiciary, and Ways and Means. Multi-committee referrals of this kind typically indicate broad jurisdictional reach across the bill's provisions and mean the bill must clear multiple panels before reaching the House floor. The bill remains in the early committee stage with no hearings, markups, or votes on record as of its introduction date. Constituent contact is most impactful now, while the bill sits in committee and members of those four panels are deciding whether to schedule hearings or advance the legislation.