Opinion: Trump’s financial conflict of interest strategies are alive and well in Congress – By Richard W. Painter (MSNBC Opinion Columnist) / December 31, 2021
Members of Congress know a lot of information that the rest of us don’t know, and some of this information can be useful for stock trading.
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.
The very people who make the laws — members of Congress, as well as the president and the vice president — are exempt from this law.
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.
