Just two weeks ago, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi renewed hopes that Congress might stop lawmakers from trading stocks on the grounds that they have access to non-public information.

"We believe we have a product that we can bring to the floor this month,” Pelosi said on Sept. 14.

But Congress is taking a breather until Nov. 14, after missing yet another deadline to ban or curb stock trading by senators and U.S. representatives. Lawmakers promise to take up the issue again when they re-convene, but it's becoming clear that Congress is having a tough time policing itself.

The gridlock comes despite overwhelming public support for measures to rein in lawmaker trading, with the lack of action feeding the perception of corruption on Capitol Hill. Investors are going so far as to closely track politicians' trades — which have often out-performed the market — to gain an edge during this year's turbulence.

During a contentious weekly press conference on Friday, reporters pressed Pelosi on why the vote had been delayed. “Well, you have to have the votes to bring it up,” she said. “This is a legislative process.”

But her answer left many unsatisfied.

“This moment marks a failure of House leadership — and it’s yet another example of why I believe that the Democratic Party needs new leaders in the halls of Capitol Hill, as I have long made known,” Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-VA) said in a scathing statement earlier on Friday.

A long wait for a vote

Ever since the stock trading issue exploded into public consciousness in late 2021, lawmakers have repeatedly promised to rein themselves in. Back in April, as one example, a deal was purportedly on the way “in the next few weeks,” as Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand told Yahoo Finance at the time.

The stock trading issue gained attention late in 2021 with revelations that, in the lead-up to the pandemic, then-Senator Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) and Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) sold stocks soon after a private briefing on COVID-19. Burr faced a Justice Department investigation that eventually ended without charges, while Loeffler lost her election bid.