The Laws We Would Already Have
Americans agree on more than you think. Here's the legislation that would exist right now if Congress worked for you instead of their donors.
Amendment Media | Jim Pearl
There is a version of America where Congress passes laws that most Americans actually want.
In that version, you can afford your insulin. Members of Congress cannot trade stocks on inside information. New parents get paid time off to be with their children. The money flowing from corporations and foreign governments into political campaigns is constrained by law rather than protected by it.
That version of America is not a fantasy. It is the direct result of polling — consistent, bipartisan, cross-demographic polling conducted over years by institutions ranging from Fox News to the University of Maryland to the Kaiser Family Foundation. The American people have been registering their preferences clearly and repeatedly. Congress has been ignoring them just as clearly and just as repeatedly.
This is not a partisan observation. The bills that would translate these preferences into law have sponsors from both parties. The polling that documents public support comes from pollsters on both ends of the ideological spectrum. The obstruction comes from both parties equally — because both parties are funded by the same donor classes whose profits depend on these laws never passing.
What follows is not a wish list. It is a legislative record — of bills that exist, sponsors who have signed them, and public support that has been documented. The only missing ingredient is a Congress willing to vote for what its constituents actually want.
1. Ban Members of Congress from Trading Stocks
Public support: 86 percent. Bills introduced: Yes. Passed: No.
The number is not 51 percent. It is not a slim majority. According to a University of Maryland Program for Public Consultation survey, 86 percent of Americans — 87 percent of Republicans, 88 percent of Democrats, and 81 percent of independents — support prohibiting members of Congress from trading individual stocks.
The legislation exists. The bipartisan Restore Trust in Congress Act was introduced in the Senate in January 2026 by Republican Senator Ashley Moody of Florida and Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York. Its House companion, led by Republican Chip Roy of Texas and Democrat Seth Magaziner of Rhode Island, has 126 cosponsors. A discharge petition has gathered 79 signatures from both parties. It has not come to a full House vote.
The reason is not complicated. Members of Congress made 9,261 individual stock trades in 2024 alone, involving 706 million shares. Approximately one in three members traded stocks or other financial assets from 2019 to 2021, with at least 3,700 of those trades posing potential conflicts of interest with their committee responsibilities. The people with the power to pass the ban are the same people who benefit from there being no ban.
The discharge petition has 79 signatures. It needs 218. The gap between those two numbers is not a policy disagreement. It is a reflection of how many members of Congress have calculated that passing the ban would cost them more than failing to pass it.
2. Cap Insulin at $35 for All Americans
Public support: Supermajority. Bills introduced: Yes. Passed: Partially.
This one is partially a success story — which makes the remaining failure more instructive, not less.
In 2022, Congress capped insulin costs at $35 per month for Medicare recipients. It was a significant step for seniors. It left everyone else behind. Americans with private insurance — the majority of the diabetic population — continued paying whatever their insurer and pharmacy benefit manager decided to charge, which in many cases ran hundreds of dollars per month for a drug whose manufacturing cost is under ten dollars.
In March 2026, a bipartisan group of senators introduced the INSULIN Act of 2026, which would extend the $35 cap to all commercially insured Americans. The bill was co-authored by Democrat Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, Republican Susan Collins of Maine, Democrat Raphael Warnock of Georgia, and Republican John Kennedy of Louisiana. Four senators. Two parties. One straightforward extension of a policy that already works for seniors.
The bill has not passed.
The insulin story is a precise illustration of how Washington operates on issues with supermajority public support. A partial solution passes when political conditions briefly align. The complete solution — the one that covers everyone — remains pending indefinitely, hostage to the pharmaceutical and insurance industries whose profits depend on the current pricing structure. Every American diabetic who cannot afford insulin already knows who is paying for that arrangement. The donor records make it visible to everyone else.
3. Guarantee Paid Family Leave
Public support: 82 percent. Bills introduced: Yes. Passed: No.
The United States is the only wealthy nation in the world that does not guarantee paid leave to new parents. This is not a contested observation — it is a documented fact about American labor policy that has remained true for decades while every peer nation in the developed world has moved in the opposite direction.
The polling is consistent regardless of who conducts it. A YouGov survey of 21,000 Americans found 82 percent support for paid maternity leave. A Navigator Research poll found 69 percent of Republicans, 77 percent of independents, and 90 percent of Democrats supporting a national paid family and medical leave program. The number has barely moved in years, because public support for this policy is not a fluctuating opinion. It is a settled preference.
The FAMILY Act was first introduced in 2013. It has been reintroduced repeatedly in the years since. It has never passed.
The argument against it is not that Americans don’t want it. The argument is always cost, always complexity, always some procedural reason why this particular Congress cannot address this particular issue in this particular session. The argument has been made for thirteen consecutive years while American parents continue to be the only workers in the developed world legally entitled to nothing when a child arrives.
And people wonder why nobody is having kids.
The donor math is not complicated. The industries that would bear the costs of a national paid leave program have spent generously ensuring that the political conditions for passing it never fully materialize. The 82 percent of Americans who support the policy are not organized into a donor class. They are organized into a voting public — which, as the system currently functions, is a less efficient form of political power than a checkbook.
4. Get the Money Out
Public support: Broad. Legislation: Proposed. Passed: No.
This is the issue underneath all the other issues. It is the reason the stock trading ban has 86 percent support and no floor vote. It is the reason insulin costs $300 when it costs $10 to make. It is the reason paid family leave has been pending for thirteen years. It is the reason Thomas Massie lost his seat for working with Ro Khanna on a bill that lobbyists didn’t write.
The mechanics are not complicated. A donor class funds campaigns. The politicians who receive that money pass legislation that benefits the donor class. The politicians who refuse get primaried with the donor class’s money. The process repeats. It is not a conspiracy theory. It is a documented transaction, visible in FEC filings, voting records, and the gap between public polling and legislative outcomes that this article has been cataloguing.
Multiple reform proposals exist in various stages of legislative development — from the DISCLOSE Act requiring dark money disclosure to more sweeping proposals for public campaign financing. None has passed, for the obvious reason that the people who would pass it are the people who benefit from it not passing.
The evidence for why this matters is not abstract. It is the three items listed above: a stock trading ban with 86 percent support and no floor vote, an insulin cap that covers seniors but not the broader diabetic population, and a paid family leave bill pending for thirteen consecutive years. Each one has the votes of the public. None has the votes of Congress. The explanation is the same in every case.
The List
If Congress voted tomorrow on what Americans actually want — not what their donors want, not what their party leadership wants, but what the documented public preference of their constituents demands — the following laws would pass:
A ban on congressional stock trading, sponsored by members of both parties, supported by 86 percent of Americans, would become law.
A $35 insulin cap covering all Americans with private insurance, sponsored by senators from both parties, would become law.
A national paid family leave guarantee, supported by more than 80 percent of Americans across party lines, would become law after thirteen years of waiting.
A prescription drug price negotiation framework giving the government leverage over pharmaceutical pricing would become law.
Disclosure requirements for dark money in political campaigns would become law.
Meaningful constraints on foreign government influence in American elections would become law.
None of these are radical proposals. None require a fundamental restructuring of the American economy. All of them have documented supermajority public support. All of them have been introduced in Congress. None of them have passed in their complete form.
The distance between what Americans want and what Congress delivers is not a mystery. It has an explanation, and the explanation has a donor list.
Amendment Media will publish it.