The Public Thinks Members of Congress Shouldn’t Be Able to Own Individual Stocks

By Jon Green and Mark White

On Thursday evening, ProPublica reported that Senator Richard Burr (R-NC) offloaded stocks he likely knew were about to lose value in advance of the coronavirus-induced stock market crash. Specifically, Burr received a daily briefing on coronavirus preparedness in his capacity as the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee. On February 7th, he wrote an op-ed arguing that the United States had never been better prepared to handle a public health crisis such as coronavirus. On February 13th, he sold between $628,000 and $1.72 million of stock—mostly in companies particularly vulnerable to a public health crisis, such as hotel chains. On February 27th, he attended a luncheon at an exclusive social club where he warned members, some of whom are donors to his campaign, that the virus would wreak havoc on the markets. But, as late as March 5th, he was reassuring the public that the government had the situation under control. When asked for comment, one of Burr’s aides explained that this was permissible because Burr offloaded his shares before the market tanked. Yet, selling his shares before the market tanked is exactly what people consider problematic about Burr’s behavior.

The Daily Beast has also reported that Senator Kelly Loeffler (R-GA), the wealthiest member of Congress, sold off an even larger amount of stock—as much as $3.1 million—following a closed-door briefing she received from administration officials on January 24th in her capacity as a member of the Senate Health Committee—and then went on to tell the public that concerns about the virus were overblown. She also made two stock purchases, and one of them was for a company that sells teleconferencing software—precisely the sort of company you’d expect to increase in value if the majority of white-collar workers in the county were suddenly instructed to work from home.

As surprising as it may seem, it is unclear whether either Burr or Loeffler broke any laws. What they did may have been prohibited by the STOCK Act of 2012, but that law was watered down in 2013. Nevertheless, we can say with confidence that the public thinks this sort of behavior should be illegal—and then some. A majority of voters are willing to go as far as to prohibit members of Congress from owning any individual stocks at all, restricting elected officials to mutual and index funds.

In a survey fielded December 2019, we asked 1,025 respondents:

Do you support or oppose banning members of Congress from holding individual stocks? They could still hold mutual or index funds.

And they indicated their attitude on a strongly support, somewhat support, somewhat oppose, strongly oppose, and not sure scale. As the below figure shows, 52% of respondents support the proposal, with 24% of respondents opposed, and an additional 24% unsure.

Republican respondents are more likely to have an opinion on this policy than their independent and Democratic counterparts. Republicans support banning members of Congress from owning individual stocks 55% to 27% (+28 points on net), while Democrats support it by a 50% to 23% (+27) margin.

As is often the case in issue polling, self-identified liberals and conservatives are more likely to report opinions in either direction than ideological moderates. Liberals support banning members of Congress from owning individual stocks by a 56% to 20% (+36) margin, while conservatives support the policy by 53% to 28% (+25). And 29% of moderates report no opinion on the policy one way or the other, but the remaining 71% break 49% to 22% in favor.

It might not be illegal for members of Congress to offload a bunch of stock in advance of a market crash that they know—due to the knowledge they possess as members of Congress—is coming. However, voters would prefer it if we took the option out of their hands altogether and ban them from owning stock in individual companies. Senator Elizabeth Warren has previously introduced legislation to do exactly that.

Methodology

This survey is based on 1,025 internet interviews of self-identified registered voters, conducted from December 27 through December 30, 2019, by YouGov Blue. The sample was selected to be representative of registered voters, and weighted according to gender, age, race, education, region, and past presidential vote based on registered voters in the November 2016 Current Population Survey, conducted by the U.S. Bureau of the Census. The weights range from 0.2 to 6.2 with a mean of 1 and a standard deviation of 0.9.