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Legislation that would forbid insider trading by members of Congress, pushed for years by Democratic House member Louise Slaughter of Fairport, is moving through the U.S. Senate and will soon be taken up in the House.
OK, pick yourself up off the floor. You didn’t know that members of Congress were effectively if not officially exempt from laws making it illegal to trade stocks and other securities based on non-public information they get as lawmakers, the violation of which would land the rest of us in jail?
Even in the wholly justified Age of Cynicism in which we live, this one comes as a bit of a shocker, courtesy of a “60 Minutes” expose last November that in particular embarrassed the likes of House Speaker John Boehner, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, former Speaker Dennis Hastert (of Illinois), current chairman of the House Financial Services Committee Spencer Bachus of Alabama, etc., all of whom made out handsomely from investments carried out at, oh, very fortuitous times.
Noted Peter Schweizer, a fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution at Stanford University, in the “60 Minutes” piece: “We know that during the health care debate people were trading health care stocks. We know that during the financial crisis of 2008 they were getting out of the market before the rest of America really knew what was going on ...
“If you are a member of Congress and you sit on the defense committee, you are free to trade defense stock as much as you want to. If you’re on the Senate banking committee you can trade bank stock as much as you want. And that regularly goes on ... in all these committees.”
This so-called “honest graft” or “soft corruption” manifests itself in a variety of ways. Say you’re a congressman who buys a bunch of farmland that, lo and behold, ends up having a highway run through it courtesy of a congressional earmark. Or perhaps you get invited to participate in an initial public stock offering, or IPO, that allows you to purchase shares at a bargain price just before everybody else gets in on the action.
These legislators would like you to believe, of course, that all this is just happy coincidence, that there are no conflicts regarding the profits they make through the industries they regulate, that they’re just, well, luckier than the rest of us. It was very telling that the legislators mentioned declined to be interviewed by “60 Minutes,” or found themselves busy with other matters, or hemmed and hawed — none more so than Pelosi — when they were cornered by a reporter at a news conference.
Legislation that would forbid insider trading by members of Congress, pushed for years by Democratic House member Louise Slaughter of Fairport, is moving through the U.S. Senate and will soon be taken up in the House.
OK, pick yourself up off the floor. You didn’t know that members of Congress were effectively if not officially exempt from laws making it illegal to trade stocks and other securities based on non-public information they get as lawmakers, the violation of which would land the rest of us in jail?
Even in the wholly justified Age of Cynicism in which we live, this one comes as a bit of a shocker, courtesy of a “60 Minutes” expose last November that in particular embarrassed the likes of House Speaker John Boehner, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, former Speaker Dennis Hastert (of Illinois), current chairman of the House Financial Services Committee Spencer Bachus of Alabama, etc., all of whom made out handsomely from investments carried out at, oh, very fortuitous times.
Noted Peter Schweizer, a fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution at Stanford University, in the “60 Minutes” piece: “We know that during the health care debate people were trading health care stocks. We know that during the financial crisis of 2008 they were getting out of the market before the rest of America really knew what was going on ...
“If you are a member of Congress and you sit on the defense committee, you are free to trade defense stock as much as you want to. If you’re on the Senate banking committee you can trade bank stock as much as you want. And that regularly goes on ... in all these committees.”
This so-called “honest graft” or “soft corruption” manifests itself in a variety of ways. Say you’re a congressman who buys a bunch of farmland that, lo and behold, ends up having a highway run through it courtesy of a congressional earmark. Or perhaps you get invited to participate in an initial public stock offering, or IPO, that allows you to purchase shares at a bargain price just before everybody else gets in on the action.
These legislators would like you to believe, of course, that all this is just happy coincidence, that there are no conflicts regarding the profits they make through the industries they regulate, that they’re just, well, luckier than the rest of us. It was very telling that the legislators mentioned declined to be interviewed by “60 Minutes,” or found themselves busy with other matters, or hemmed and hawed — none more so than Pelosi — when they were cornered by a reporter at a news conference.
This legislation — the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act, or STOCK Act — would formally make it a no-can-do to initiate these money-making efforts based on non-public information gathered through their roles as members of Congress, while also requiring disclosure of all transactions within 30 days of their being made.
It’s so simple a grade-schooler would get it: Lawmakers must not get a pass from the laws they make. Maybe these elected officials should be required to place their assets in a blind trust while they serve.
Anyone wonder why Congress’ approval ratings are at record lows, at below 15 percent making President Obama’s 47 percent or so seem positively stratospheric? Revelations like this are why.
