Do Members of Congress Buy Treasury Bills?

Every member with a Treasury trade

Treasury bills mature in a year or less and pay no coupon: they are bought below face value and repaid at face value. Treasury notes run two to ten years and bonds twenty or thirty, and both pay interest twice a year. On a member's periodic transaction report a Treasury purchase usually reads like "US Treasury Bill due 4/6/23", sometimes with the security's CUSIP. Trades in a spouse's or dependent child's account go on the member's report and count for the member. The table lists every member with a Treasury trade on the reports Coldpine has on file.

A short list of members

25 of the 45 members reported five or more Treasury trades, and the five with the most reported 267 of the 634 (42%). Scott H. Peters reported 106: 43 purchases and 63 sales, 95 of them bills. A household that rolls short-term bills, buying a new one as the last matures, reports a purchase every few weeks or months, so a handful of accounts can produce most of the count.

Bills, notes and bonds

Of the 634 Treasury trades, 454 were bills (72%), 127 notes, 11 bonds and 9 savings bonds; 33 lines name only "U.S. Treasury" without saying which kind. Purchases outnumber sales 442 to 192. Part of the reason is how these securities work: a bill or note held to maturity is repaid rather than sold, so the end of the holding may never appear on a report as a sale.

How large the reported amounts are

Reports give a dollar range, not an exact amount. 93 of the 634 Treasury trades were in a range starting at $1 million or more, from 12 members, and 79 were in the lowest range, $1,001 to $15,000. Adding up the low end of every purchase range gives at least $103 million of Treasuries bought. Treasury trades tend to be larger than stock trades; how stock trades compare is in how big Congress's stock trades are.

Year by year

On reports filed in 2023, 24 members disclosed 165 Treasury trades, 2.6% of that year's 6,378 transactions. On reports filed in 2024, 24 members disclosed 234 Treasury trades, 3.5% of that year's 6,757 transactions. On reports filed in 2025, 18 members disclosed 119 Treasury trades, 1.3% of that year's 8,885 transactions. On reports filed in 2026, 19 members disclosed 116 Treasury trades, 1.5% of that year's 7,848 transactions. 2026 counts reports through November 9, 2026, and 2026 is the first year that includes Senate reports, which adds to that year's total. The highest share was in 2024. On reports filed in the last 365 days, 22 members disclosed 132 Treasury trades.

Whose account, and which party

257 of the Treasury trades were listed in a spouse's account, 37 in a dependent child's, 68 jointly held and 76 as the member's own; the rest did not state an owner. How much of Congress's trading sits in family accounts generally is in the spouse and child trades article. Democrats reported 332 of the Treasury trades (18 members) and Republicans 301 (26 members).

Treasury funds and ETFs

Some members hold Treasuries through a fund instead: an ETF of short-term bills, or a bank sweep fund that holds only Treasuries. Those are fund shares, not Treasury securities, so they are left out of every figure above. Counted on their own, members reported 136 trades in funds and ETFs with Treasury in the name (7 members, 74 purchases and 62 sales). Options and other contracts are covered in do members of Congress trade options.

What this does and does not show

These are reported transactions, not holdings. A member can own Treasuries bought before taking office, or hold them through a fund, without a Treasury trade appearing here, and filers differ in how they describe and itemize these purchases. So the count describes what was reported, not who owns Treasuries. Reporting a trade is what the law requires, and none of these counts is evidence of wrongdoing by any member.

Methodology and honest caveats

The figures cover periodic transaction reports filed from January 1, 2023 through November 9, 2026. Coldpine's House record goes back to January 2023, but its Senate record begins with reports filed in January 2026, so a senator's earlier Treasury trades are not counted (1 member of the 45 is a senator). A transaction counts as a Treasury trade when the asset is named as a U.S. Treasury bill, note, bond or savings bond, or carries a Treasury CUSIP. Funds, ETFs, bank sweep funds and bank-issued notes that mention Treasuries are left out of the main count and reported separately. Each line on a report is one trade, and a member who appears under two spellings is counted once. How we parse filings is set out in our methodology. Figures are computed live and update as new filings arrive, so they may differ from the ones quoted the day this was published.