A few weeks after a report by “60 Minutes” on stock trades by members of Congress, a U.S. Senate Committee holds a hearing today on a bill that would attempt to prevent lawmakers from making stock trades based on information not available to the general public.
At issue is the “STOCK Act,” which stands for Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge.
The bill is nothing new; backers have been trying for a number of years to get rid of what they argue is a giant loophole when it comes to insider trading – that members of the House and Senate routinely have access to information that can give them an advantage on the markets.
"The American people deserve the right to know their lawmakers' only interest is what's best for the country, not their own financial interests,” says Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), who will be testifying at today’s hearing.
“Members of Congress should not be above the law when it comes to insider trading and it is simply reprehensible that some are enriching themselves,” argues Jeremy Miller of the good government group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW).
The bill is by no means a total ban on stock trading for lawmakers and/or federal workers; here’s some of the language that sets out the definition of “material nonpublic information” that lawmakers could not trade on:
“(T)he term `material nonpublic information' means any information that an employee of an agency (as such term is defined in section 551(1) of title 5, United States Code) gains by reason of Federal employment and that such employee knows or should know has not been made available to the general public…is designated as confidential by an agency or….has not actually been disseminated to the general public and is not authorized to be made available to the public on request.''.
Since the 60 Minutes story about stock trading by lawmakers – which included questions for both Speaker John Boehner and House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi – a number of members have jumped on the STOCK Act bandwagon.
Whether it goes past the hearing stage is another issue, as getting the Congress to actually change how rules and regulation impact lawmakers is a whole different story.
But it's clear, some in Congress are feeling the heat on this issue.
