Only about 10 members of Congress use a blind trust. Here's why almost nobody bothers.

I always wonder the same thing when a member of Congress gets caught with good timing on a trade. Why doesn't Congress just require blind trusts? It sounds like the obvious fix. Put the money somewhere you can't see it, keep legislating, problem solved. Except almost nobody in Congress actually does this. Once you look at what a real blind trust involves, the reasons start making a lot more sense.

What a blind trust actually requires

A qualified blind trust is not just moving your stocks into an account with a different name on it. To do it for real, you first sell everything you own. An independent trustee with no relationship to you takes the cash and invests it however they want. They cannot tell you what they bought. You cannot ask. From that point forward, you genuinely do not know what is in your own portfolio.

That is what makes it "blind." It also explains why it is not simple. Most brokerages will not even take on a blind trust client below a certain account size. A structure built for people with substantial assets does not fit most members of Congress the same way.

Why so few members actually have one

Only about 10 sitting members of Congress currently keep their money in a qualified blind trust. Two of the more visible examples are Sen. Jon Ossoff of Georgia and Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona. Both moved their portfolios into trusts and have pushed legislation that would require the same of everyone else.

The rest mostly haven't, and the reasons are practical rather than shady. Cost is the first one. Legal and management fees can run into real money every year. Setting one up means paying a trustee, often for years, against a public salary of $174,000. Complexity is the second. You have to divest first, which can trigger capital gains taxes on stock you may have held for decades. And there's a fair criticism baked into the whole idea. You know what you put in on day one. A blind trust only hides what happens after that point, not the starting portfolio itself.

What members of Congress have to do instead

Without a blind trust, the only requirement is disclosure. Under the STOCK Act, a member has to report any trade over $1,000 within 45 days, in a dollar range rather than an exact amount. I've written about how those disclosures actually work and where to find them for free, and that system runs entirely on the honor system for timing. Nothing stops a member from trading on a Tuesday and reporting it six weeks later.

That gap is exactly what blind trust proposals are trying to close. It's also why, when a disclosure lands with unusually good timing, like the Whitehouse trade we covered earlier this month, people reach for the blind trust question again.

The bills trying to make it mandatory

This isn't a new idea. Versions of a mandatory blind trust requirement have been introduced in Congress for years under names like the TRUST in Congress Act and the Ban Congressional Stock Trading Act, and the current session has more than one version moving through committee. None of them has become law. Every one runs into the same wall: the people who would have to vote for it are the same people it would apply to.

Whether that changes probably says more about political pressure than about the merits of the idea itself. For now, a blind trust stays what it has always been in Congress, a voluntary, expensive, imperfect option that almost nobody chooses.

If you want to see what members actually disclose without one, I looked at whether their picks even outperform the market here.