U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Wednesday that he is “pushing for a ban on single-stock trading in Congress,” arguing that lawmakers’ personal investing presents an inherent conflict of interest. “If any private citizen traded this way, the SEC would be knocking on their door,” Bessent told reporters, singling out former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for what he described as “hedge-fund level returns.” Bessent’s remarks revive a stalled effort on Capitol Hill to restrict or end stock trading by lawmakers and their immediate families. The most prominent proposal, the bipartisan TRUST in Congress Act sponsored by Reps. Chip Roy (R-Texas) and Seth Magaziner (D-R.I.), would require members to place individual equities in a blind trust or divest them entirely. Republican Senators Josh Hawley and several House members echoed support after Bessent’s comments, while Rep. Vern Buchanan, one of the chamber’s wealthiest members, also backed a ban. Prospects for legislative action remain uncertain. Prediction platform Kalshi assigns just a 7% chance that a trading prohibition will be enacted, and Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) said some colleagues who publicly favor a ban are privately working to block it. Even so, Bessent’s intervention adds Treasury Department pressure to a growing bipartisan push to curb what critics say is a corrosive perception that elected officials use privileged information for personal gain.