Why Good Bills Go Nowhere

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Our first essay showed that Americans agree on more than the news suggests. The second showed why it does not feel that way.

This one addresses the obvious follow-up question: if 87% of Republicans and 88% of Democrats want members of Congress out of the stock market, why is there no law?

The answer is that our political system rewards inaction. Five specific barriers stand between broad public agreement and an actual law:

  • Money from wealthy donors buys access, time, and future employment. Legislators respond to donors before they respond to the broad interests of constituents.
  • Intensity beats numbers. A few people who care enormously about an issue can stop millions who agree mildly.
  • Some bills never get to a vote. A handful of people decide what reaches the floor, and no one has to defend a vote that never happened.
  • The primary is the real election. In a safe gerrymandered district, a small, unrepresentative electorate picks your representative.
  • Some people would rather have the issue than the law. An unsolved problem is a campaign issue. A solved one is not.

Let’s explore these barriers in turn, and then close with a current example of where citizens are winning right now, and what it teaches.

1. Money buys access, time, and future employment

Nobody is handing out envelopes. That is illegal, and it is rare. What money given to PACs and campaigns buys is subtler and nearly impossible to prosecute.

It buys access. A major donor’s call gets returned. A constituent’s call gets a form letter.

It buys a standing threat. A member who crosses a well-funded interest does not lose the general election. They get a well-funded primary challenger. The threat works whether or not it is ever carried out, and it never has to be spoken aloud.

It buys the next job. For many members, the most consequential job of their career is the one after Congress — at a firm, a trade association, a lobbying group. That prospect shapes behavior in office in a way no vote tally records.

It buys time. Members spend a substantial share of their working lives raising money. Every hour on the phone with donors is an hour not spent on a hearing, a bill, or you.

Americans of both parties can see this plainly. In a national survey in October 2025, 79% said large political spending by wealthy donors and corporations creates corruption or the appearance of it — 84% of Democrats and 74% of Republicans. Three-quarters said it makes them lose faith in our democracy.

2. Intensity beats numbers

A stock trading ban has 87% support. But consider: how many Americans have ever changed their vote over it? Almost none. Support today is a mile wide and an inch deep.

Now look at the other side of the ledger. A small number of people care about this enormously — primarily members of Congress, who stand to lose money personally.

When a benefit is spread thin across everyone and the cost lands concentrated on a few, the few win. They are the only ones who will do something about it. Broad, quiet approval has never moved a bill through Congress.

But intensity can change, and when it does, everything changes with it. For years, releasing the Justice Department’s files on Jeffrey Epstein went nowhere. The issue was real, the public was broadly in favor, nothing happened. Then the temperature went up. In November 2025, the House voted 427 to 1 to release the files.

Four hundred twenty-seven to one — in the same chamber that had spent months keeping the bill off the floor. Nothing about the merits had changed. The intensity had.

3. The bill never gets a vote

Most Americans picture a bill dying because it lost a vote. Most bills die without ever getting one.

In both chambers, a very small number of people decide what reaches the floor — the Speaker and the Rules Committee in the House, the Majority Leader in the Senate. A bill with overwhelming support that is never scheduled simply sits. And those who kept it there never have to defend a vote, because there was no vote.

That is exactly where the stock trading ban sits. A stronger, bipartisan version — the HONEST Act — cleared a Senate committee in July 2025 on an 8–7 vote, with a single Republican joining the Democrats and every other Republican on the panel opposed. It has not been scheduled since. Nobody voted it down.

The House has one escape hatch: the discharge petition. Get 218 signatures and a bill is pulled onto the floor over leadership’s objection. It exists precisely for this situation.

It almost never works. Since 1935, 676 discharge petitions have been filed. Forty-four reached 218 signatures. Seven became law.

Here is a major reason they fail. Until 1993, signatures were secret. Now they are public the instant a member signs, so leadership can see exactly who is defecting and apply pressure one name at a time. Most petitions die a few signatures short.

The Epstein bill was one of the rare exceptions, and look at the cost. A Republican filed the petition in early September 2025. It then sat at 217 signatures for two months while the House stayed out of session, and the 218th arrived only when a newly elected member was finally sworn in. Along the way the President called the bill’s Republican sponsor a loser and one of its Republican signers a traitor, and White House officials brought another Republican signer into the Situation Room to press her to withdraw.

Then it passed 427 to 1.

In a recent Congress, eighteen discharge petitions failed. One of them was on congressional stock trading.

4. The primary is the real election

In a district drawn to be safe by gerrymandering, the November election is generally a formality. The real contest is the primary — and primaries draw a fraction of the voters that general elections do.

A member in a safe seat is accountable only to whoever shows up in the primary: a small, highly motivated, unrepresentative slice of the district. So the rational move is to worry about a challenge from inside their own party and spend very little energy on anyone else. Not out of cynicism. Because that is where the threat is.

Here is what that means for you personally. If you are one of the roughly six in ten Ohio voters who do not routinely request a partisan primary ballot, you are not part of the electorate your representative is answering to.

5. Some would rather have the issue than the law

This is the bleakest one, and it happened six weeks ago.

On July 22, 2026, the House finally voted on congressional stock trading. The bill passed 232 to 198. But without Senate action it has not become law, and almost certainly will not.

Republicans had attached a nationwide voter ID mandate to the bill — a provision with nothing to do with stock trading, and one they knew most Democrats would not accept. Democratic leadership urged a no vote. Members of the bipartisan coalition that had spent years pushing for a real ban pointed out that the bill let members keep every stock they already owned and only barred new purchases. One called it a stock trading ban that still allows stock trading.

The result: one side gets to say the other voted against something called the Stop Insider Trading Act. Nobody gets a law.

An unsolved problem is a campaign issue. A solved problem is not.

What actually works: the data center fights

Now the encouraging part, and it is happening right now, including here in northeast Ohio.

Data centers are enormous, power-hungry, water-hungry facilities arriving in communities across the country. Polling this year found that only 14% of Americans would welcome one in their own community.

And unlike the other issues we want Congress to address, this one is moving fast. As of September 1, 2026, trackers counted 321 local and state moratoriums or restrictions across 32 states, with 261 still in force. Ohio ranks third in the country, with 35. New York enacted the first statewide moratorium in July. Laws requiring data center developers to pay for the power infrastructure they need have passed in California, Ohio, and Utah — states that agree on very little else.

So why is this moving when stock trading, which polls even better, is not?

Venue. Decisions on data centers are being made in statehouses, county commissions, and township zoning meetings — places close enough to voters that nobody can quietly decline to schedule them. There is no filibuster at a township meeting. Tellingly, state-level moratorium bills were introduced in eleven states this year and mostly stalled, while local governments kept succeeding.

Intensity. Researchers found something precise: Americans are not strongly opposed to data centers in general, but most oppose one built within three miles of their house. General approval does nothing. Three miles does everything.

When a data center is proposed near your home, you show up. You bring neighbors. You keep showing up. Nobody has ever driven to a zoning meeting about congressional stock trading.

Recap

Five barriers stand between what Americans want and what Congress does.

  • Money buys access, time, and future employment — quietly and legally.
  • Intensity beats numbers, so a passionate few defeat an agreeable many.
  • The bill never gets a vote, and nobody has to defend a vote that never happened.
  • The primary is the real election, and most of us are not in it.
  • Some would rather have the issue than the law, because unsolved problems win campaigns.

The data center lesson is a hopeful one. The next task is not persuading more people that a problem exists. It is converting the agreement people already hold into agreement people act on. The next essay speaks to that effort.

Sources and methodology
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