After campaigning on ending Congressional stock trading in 2024, US Rep. Rob Bresnahan (R-Luzerne) has become one Congress’ most prolific stock traders during his first term in office.
According to Quiver Quantitative, Bresnahan has made 644 trades valued at $8.47 million since Jan. 2025, the same month he entered Congress. Bresnahan’s trading record has now become a sticking point in one of the most contested US House races this cycle, with his Democratic opponent, Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti (D), repeatedly calling out his trades and calling for reforms.
“ I want to make sure that we do ban stock trading in Congress. It is an easy one,” Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti (D) told reporters at a town hall earlier this summer. “It shouldn’t be this hard. It’s remarkable that you can actually make trades on your votes, and that is a legal thing to do. Almost anyone you ask in America does not want that to be the case.”
Prior to voting for President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which included a roughly $1 trillion cut to Medicaid and $187 billion in cuts to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) funding, Bresnahan sold $150,000 in stocks in companies that receive Medicaid payments.
He also offloaded between $100,000 and $250,000 worth of bonds from the Allegheny County Hospital Development Authority for the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center during that time.
“ The stock issue is one of many examples of Rob Bresnahan’s hypocrisy,” Cognetti told The Keystone in an interview earlier this year.
“In 2024 when he was a candidate, he actually wrote an op-ed in our local paper calling congressional stock trading ‘sickening’ and a practice that should end immediately… So he continues to say one thing and do another.”
Bresnahan has distanced himself from his stock trading record, claiming that he doesn’t know what’s inside of his stock portfolio and that the trading is done by his financial advisors.
“I honestly have no idea what’s inside of the portfolio that I own…I do not have any dialogues with my financial advisers,” Bresnahan told WHYY last year.
Related: Cognetti criticizes Bresnahan for profiting from Trump Medicaid cuts
Bresnahan has also come under scrutiny for purchasing stock from Lockheed Martin, a military contractor, months before Trump launched missile strikes against Iran in 2025, and owning millions in stock related to data centers and artificial intelligence while promising to regulate those industries.
“ What we saw in Rob Bresnahan when he came to office is another example in northeastern Pennsylvania of someone getting a job as a public official and using it to line their own pockets,” Cognetti told supporters in July.
“This is not a new scenario. We have seen this far too many times in this region, generation after generation.”
