The other side assumes a ban removes the conflict. I'd argue conflicts don't disappear; they just go unseen. Think like evidence-based medicine: you don't ban a treatment because a few misuse it, you track outcomes and enforce rules. Lawmakers need public, real-time disclosure of trades, not a prohibition that pushes activity into blind trusts or spouses' accounts. A ban also chills qualified people from serving. The stronger fix is transparency plus independent enforcement, which actually targets corruption instead of pretending it's gone.

The other side frames this as trust, and sure, public confidence matters. But look at what a ban actually does. In medicine, we learned that prohibition without monitoring just drives behavior underground. A blanket ban doesn't stop self-dealing, it relocates it to blind trusts, index funds, and relatives. So you lose the data you need to catch real corruption. Real-time disclosure plus independent enforcement is the intervention with evidence behind it. If the goal is trust, measurable transparency beats an unverifiable prohibition every time.

Senators' stock portfolios beat the market by about 12% a year in one well-known study, so yes, insider trading is real. My opponent is right that nonpublic data creates temptation. But a ban doesn't remove the incentive, it just moves trades to blind trusts, spouses, or index funds where you can't see them. In medicine, we don't ban a drug because some abuse it; we track outcomes and punish misuse. Real-time disclosure plus independent enforcement is the measurable intervention. A prohibition is faith-based, not evidence-based.