Congress files on time. The executive branch does not
Everyone blames Congress for late disclosure. Is that where the problem actually is?
House Democrats in our data disclosed 97% of their equity trades inside the legal window. The executive branch filers missed the deadline on the large majority of theirs. If you have read that Congress is hopeless at disclosure, you have read a statistic that quietly folded in a different branch of government.
Average days from trade to disclosure (45 is the limit)
Computed live from our database when you loaded this page. Nothing here is hand-typed, so nothing here can go stale.
| Branch | Chamber | Party | Equity trades | Filers | Filed late | Avg days |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Executive branch | executive | - | 621 | 5 | +85.2% | 60 |
| Congress | house | D | 372 | 24 | +2.7% | 28 |
| Congress | house | R | 155 | 23 | +15.5% | 75 |
| Congress | senate | R | 63 | 5 | 0% | 25 |
| Congress | senate | D | 12 | 3 | +8.3% | 42 |
| Congress | senate | - | 1 | 1 | 0% | 29 |
Live from our database. 6 rows shown.
- Equity trades only, split by branch, chamber and party, measuring days from transaction to disclosure.
- The STOCK Act deadline is 45 days.
- Sample sizes differ enormously between groups. The Senate rows rest on far fewer trades than the House rows, and a percentage on 12 trades is not the same kind of claim as a percentage on 368.
- Our filer coverage is a sample. This is not a compliance audit of Congress and must not be cited as one.
- We are describing paperwork, not motive.
Free to quote, chart or republish with attribution. Cite as: SteadyShares, Congress files on time. The executive branch does not, https://steadyshares.com/research/congress-versus-the-executive. If you are a journalist and want the underlying query or a different cut of the data, ask and we will run it.
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Educational information, not financial advice, and not a recommendation to buy or sell anything. A late regulatory filing is a paperwork failure and nothing more: we make no allegation of wrongdoing against any person named on this page.