Sponsors (19)
Official title: To amend chapter 131 of title 5, United States Code, and the STOCK Act to require certain senior officials to report payments received from the Federal Government, to improve the filing and disclosure of financial disclosures by Members of Congress, congressional staff, very senior employees, and others, and to ban stock trading for certain senior Government officials, and for other purposes.
Introduced June 5, 2025 by Dave Min · Last progress June 5, 2025
The bill substantially increases transparency, accountability, and enforcement of ethics rules for a wide set of federal officials (including Federal Reserve bank leaders) — improving oversight and deterring conflicts — at the cost of greater privacy and security risks for filers and their families, new compliance costs and fines, and sizable administrative and IT burdens on agencies that could deter some qualified public servants.
Millions of Americans (taxpayers and the public) gain much greater transparency because covered federal officials — including members of Congress, judicial officers, candidates, and Federal Reserve bank officers — must disclose payments and transactions and those records are made publicly available and machine-searchable, improving oversight and deterrence of conflicts of interest.
Federal Reserve Bank presidents, vice presidents, and directors are brought under federal ethics/disclosure rules and STOCK Act coverage with oversight assigned to the Fed Inspector General and CFPB, which increases accountability, provides enforcement tools to deter self-dealing, and may boost public trust in the Fed.
Covered federal officers and employees face clearer, standardized compliance expectations — including explicit civil penalties for missed transaction reports and a requirement for supervising ethics offices to update rules and guidance within one year — which creates clearer incentives to comply and can reduce ambiguity about reporting obligations.
Making detailed transaction data (including timing and amounts) publicly available in machine-readable form creates significant privacy and security risks — exposing filers and their families to harassment, doxxing, targeted attacks, or misuse of information for illicit trading — and large-scale scraping via APIs increases those risks.
Covered individuals (federal employees, Reserve Bank leaders, judges, candidates) face new and sometimes recurring out-of-pocket compliance costs plus per-violation civil fines (up to specified amounts), increasing financial burdens on those in public service and raising the stakes of paperwork errors.
Implementing the law requires significant administrative work and IT investment by agencies, the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, Inspectors General, and ethics offices (rule updates, training, building and maintaining electronic filing systems) within tight deadlines and without specified appropriations, creating costs for taxpayers and implementation risk.
Based on analysis of 6 sections of legislative text.
Expands federal ethics reporting, extends STOCK Act coverage to certain Fed Bank officers, revises penalty language, and mandates public, machine‑readable disclosure databases.
Requires expanded ethics reporting and public disclosure across the federal government, imposes civil penalties for missed filings, extends ethics laws to certain Federal Reserve Bank officers, and mandates machine-readable online access to financial and transaction reports for Members of Congress, candidates, senior executive officials, and judicial officers. It also changes who may issue a certificate of divestiture under the tax code and directs agencies and courts to update rules, guidance, and public databases within set timeframes (mostly 90 days to 1 year).