Congress passed the STOCK Act in 2012 to make sure members reported their trades fast enough that the public could actually see them. The deadline is 30 days from learning of the transaction, 45 days from the trade itself. The penalty for blowing past it is $200. Four members of Congress have apparently done the math and decided that's a reasonable cost of doing business. Tim Walberg files late 92.9% of the time, with an average delay of 436 days across 14 filings. Katie Britt: also 92.9% late, 205-day average, 243-day max. John Boozman: 64.3% late, 233-day average, a 373-day max. Christian Menefee: 66.7% late, 61-day average. These aren't clerical hiccups. These are patterns. The law exists. The filings prove it's optional.
The Scoreboard
Let's just put the numbers in a row and let them sit there.
Tim Walberg (R-MI) has filed 14 periodic transaction reports covered in this data set. Thirteen of them were late. The average delay: 436 days. Not 43. Not 143. Four hundred and thirty-six days. The law says 45. Walberg's average is nearly ten times that. The 436-day average means some of his filings cleared after more than a year. The transaction happened. The world moved on. Congress debated, recessed, debated again. Walberg's disclosure was somewhere in the pipeline.
Katie Britt (R-AL) matches Walberg's late rate exactly: 92.9% across the same 14-filing sample. Her average delay is 205 days, and her worst single filing ran 243 days past the deadline. Eight months. A fetus can develop most of its organs in less time than it takes Britt to report a transaction to the public she represents.
John Boozman (R-AR) clocks in at 64.3% late, which is almost a relief by comparison until you see his max: 373 days. Nearly as bad as Walberg's average. His mean delay across late filings is 233 days. Boozman has been in the Senate since 2011. He has had years to learn the rules. The filings suggest this has not been a priority.
Christian Menefee (D-TX) is the relative overachiever of this group, averaging 61 days on a 66-day max across 6 filings, with a 66.7% late rate. He's still late two-thirds of the time. His delays look like a rounding error next to Walberg's, but the law doesn't grade on a curve.
The Fine. Read It Slowly.
The STOCK Act sets the penalty for a late periodic transaction report at $200. That's the statutory minimum. The House or Senate Ethics Committee can waive it entirely.
Two hundred dollars.
Members are required to disclose. They are not required to divest, recuse, abstain, blush, or look up from their phones. And if they file a year late, the downside is a penalty that wouldn't cover a dinner at a mid-range D.C. steakhouse.
The $200 fine was not designed to deter anyone who actually wanted to delay. It was designed to let Congress say it had penalties. There's a difference.
Systematic, Not Accidental
One late filing is a staffer who dropped the ball. Two is a bad quarter. A 92.9% late rate across 14 filings is a policy decision, even if nobody wrote it down.
Walberg's 436-day average isn't a function of one egregious outlier dragging the mean. It's a consistent pattern across more than a dozen disclosures. Britt's 92.9% rate on 14 filings means she has filed on time once, maybe twice, in the entire sample window. Boozman's 373-day max tells you the outer bound of what his office considers acceptable.
The point of the 45-day deadline wasn't arbitrary. A trade disclosed 14 months after the fact is not transparency. It's a historical footnote. By the time the public can see it, the market has moved, the vote has happened, the session has ended. The information is technically available and practically useless for oversight purposes.
That's the outcome when the penalty is $200 and the Ethics Committee can waive it on request. The rule exists. The compliance does not.
A Bipartisan Achievement
Walberg, Britt, and Boozman are Republicans. Menefee is a Democrat. The STOCK Act was passed with bipartisan support. The willingness to ignore it is also, apparently, bipartisan.
Menefee's numbers are less dramatic than the others, but the pattern is the same shape: late more often than not, by a margin that doesn't suggest an overwhelmed staff racing to catch up. His max delay of 66 days is barely over the legal deadline. His average is 61. That's not a crisis. It's a habit.
The four members represent Michigan, Alabama, Arkansas, and Texas. Four different states, two chambers, two parties. The common variable is the $200 fine sitting there, doing nothing.
What Oversight Looks Like From Here
The House and Senate Ethics Committees exist to enforce these rules. The $200 penalty and the waiver mechanism both live inside those committees. The committees are made up of members of Congress. The members of Congress are the people being regulated.
This is the part that should bother you.
The STOCK Act was marketed as accountability. Periodic transaction reports were the mechanism. The mechanism has a 45-day clock and a $200 consequence. Four members in this data set average delays measured in months and years. The system is functioning exactly as its weakest parts allow.
The receipts are public. Make of them what you make of them.