Congressional Stock Trading Violates Ethical Rules

I have heard some saying Congress should be paid the minimum wage, and then they might be concerned more about working people. But the truth is that most in Congress are rich, and those who are not are trying to get rich -- and they do that by buying and selling stocks. This is an ethical concern, since much of what they do with legislation affects the prices of the stocks they are trading (some of it is obvious insider trading). 

Much of this is legal for Congress (while not legal for other government employees), and the part that is already illegal is ignored. We need new laws and ways to keep this from happening. They are supposed to be there to help the American people -- not make themselves rich (or richer)!

The following is part of an article by Richard Painter at MSNBC.com:

This year, 52 members of the House and Senate violated the STOCK Act, a 2012 law that requires prompt and accurate reporting of stock trades by members of Congress, Insider reported. Apparently, they were too busy trading to focus on filing accurate reports in a timely manner.

It seems like the simple solution would be to prohibit congressional members from trading individual stocks to avoid potential foul play. Yet House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., recently announced that she would oppose efforts to prohibit members of Congress and their spouses (her own husband being one of them) from trading individual stocks.

This is a dangerous move, for many reasons. Ordinarily, Pelosi’s stubborn defense of congressional stock trading would be an opportunity for House Republicans to take the high ground on ethics, put their assets in mutual funds or blind trusts and then promise that if they get control of the House in 2022, stock trading by all members will be prohibited. Good luck with that; Republicans in Congress are way too busy trading their own stocks to worry about ethics.

The hypocrisy of Congress is astonishing when you look at the fact that every other federal employee is subject to a criminal statute that prohibits financial conflicts of interest with official duties. It is a crime for a federal officer to participate in a particular government matter, including supporting or opposing a bill in Congress, that has a direct and predictable effect on the federal officer’s financial interest.

Of course, the very people who make the laws — members of Congress, as well as the president and the vice president — are exempt from this law. They are allowed to have financial conflicts of interest with their official duties that for other federal employees are a crime.

Then there is the insider trading problem. Members of Congress know a lot of information the rest of us don’t know, and some of this information can be useful for stock trading. Trading on the basis of nonpublic information misappropriated from Congress or any other employer, however, is a crime. Investment bankers and corporate officers routinely go to jail for insider trading, and the Securities and Exchange Commission, when it suspects insider trading, can commence an investigation and subpoena corporate emails, texts and other records showing what traders knew and when they knew it. It's not so easy in the case of Congress because the speech and debate clause of the Constitution is interpreted to severely limit the ability of federal investigators to obtain records and find out who said what to whom in congressional offices and on the floor.

Investigating allegations of congressional insider trading is thus left to the House and Senate ethics committees, which have little experience with such investigations and furthermore report to the very members of Congress they are investigating. . . .

The New York Times reported recently that “politicians and their immediate families bought $267 million and sold $364 million worth of assets this year,” pointing out that “Democrats are really into tech stocks, which accounted for some $35 million” and that “Republicans are more about energy, buying $32 million worth of stock in companies in the sector during the year.”. . .

Congressional stock trading must come to an end; members should be required to place their assets in blind trusts or diversified mutual funds and focus their attention on the nation’s business, not their own. Anyone in Congress unwilling to make this commitment should find another job.