I’ve spent 30 years managing money for wealthy families, and every one of those years I’ve operated under fiduciary rules that would land me in front of the Securities and Exchange Commission if I traded ahead of information my clients didn’t have. That’s not a courtesy I extend. It’s the law. So, when the House passed the Stop Insider Trading Act on July 22, barring members of Congress, their spouses, and their dependent children from buying new individual stocks, my first reaction wasn’t celebration. It was closer to relief that Congress is finally catching up to a standard the rest of us have lived under for decades.

The bill, sponsored by Rep. Bryan Steil (R-WI), passed 232-198. It doesn’t force members to sell what they already own. What it does is stop new purchases of individual stocks while in office and require seven to 14 days’ public notice before any sale, with fines and forfeiture of profits for violators. Critics are right that this isn’t a full ban. A true ban would require divestiture on a fixed timeline, the way the bipartisan Restore Trust in Congress Act proposed. That bill never got a floor vote. This one did. I’ll take the incremental win over the theoretical perfect one.