Few things unite Americans as much as our shared disdain for Congress. It’s increasingly unproductive, superficial and quarrelsome, and its members are falling down on the job: neglecting core oversight and authorization responsibilities and ditching thoughtful lawmaking in favor of entertainment-style politics.
The Congress we have today is not reflective of the greatest nation on earth. We are simply not sending our best. And this is why we must pay its members significantly more.
We must also not add burdens to serving there. Recently a Senate committee advanced a ban on stock trading for members of Congress. House members are similarly considering such a move. It may make for good politics, but this only reinforces one of the biggest problems facing Congress: It is a miserable place to work. We need to make serving more attractive, not more onerous.
It is already illegal for members of Congress to make stock trades using insider information. In 2019, Christopher Collins, Republican of New York, resigned from the House and pleaded guilty to insider trading. He was sentenced to more than two years in prison. (President Trump pardoned him, but that is a whole other matter.)
And there is already a mechanism that makes it easy to identify questionable trades. Under the 2012 Stock Act, members’ transactions are made public for the world to see, for the press to cover and for political opponents to question. It may be appropriate to increase penalties for shirking deadlines for disclosure, but the trades themselves are not secret. Today you can even invest in an index fund tied to the trades made by members of Congress.
The push to ban stock trading outright is just the latest austere, populist measure targeting members of Congress to gain currency.
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