Our lay-about Congress needs to shape up or ship out. Neither party can claim any moral high ground these days they bot are corrupt and lazy….they spend more time running to the nearest camera and/or mic to make their ramblings and then retreat into the inner sanctum of Congress and do little that would actually benefit this country or its citizens in any way.
They trade stocks using insider information with impunity….that needs to stop and stop now.
There is a bi-partisan bill in Congress that could end such practices…..
Congress took an important step toward cleaning up its act: for only the third time since the Civil War, it voted to expel one of its members. But the ethical rot in Congress extends beyond former Rep. George Santos’ outrageous lies and campaign and financial abuses. The institution is in a crisis of public confidence that we must address.
Routine reports of members of Congress making suspicious stock trades and owning stock in companies they regulate have severely harmed the public’s confidence that members of Congress act in the best interest of our country—rather than their own wallets.
It’s past time that we rise to the occasion and pass comprehensive legislation to ban members of Congress, their spouses and their dependent children from owning or trading stock, and that’s precisely what the bipartisan Ending Trading and Holding In Congressional Stocks (ETHICS) Act would do.
This critical bipartisan legislation, which was introduced by two of this column’s co-authors—Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) in the House and Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) in the Senate—as well as by Rep. Michael Cloud (R-TX) in the House, addresses the threat posed by members of Congress owning and trading individual securities, which undermines the critical work of the federal government.
At the beginning of the pandemic, a moment when public confidence in our institutions of government was critical, Congress was rocked by reports of members trading individual stocks in pharmaceutical companies after receiving non-public information about the threat of COVID-19. Since then, we’ve seen a steady drip of scandals, each day seemingly bringing another story of members trading stocks in industries their committees regulate, or holding investments in fossil fuel companies while sitting on committees in charge of climate change policies. And each new incident drives public faith in our government lower and lower.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/one-simple-way-to-get-the-public-to-trust-congress-again
Sorry but this idea made me chuckle.
To be honest I do not think this has a snowball’s chance of passing for members of Congress get millions from insider info and from lobbyists buying their support for further screwing of the people they represent.
But anyway I think it is a stellar idea.
That may be the kiss of death.
Any thoughts?
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“lego ergo scribo”