Strengthening the Conflict of Interest Standards Required of Congressional Members
On her morning show on MSNBC on December 16, 2021, Stephanie Ruhle interviewed Andrew Ross Sorkin of Squawk Box on the subject of members of Congress who violate the rules of Congress by not REPORTING hundreds of stock trades worth multiple millions of dollars. Pelosi says she doesn't want to limit Congress from trading while in office.
At a press conference on Wednesday, December 15, 2021, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said that lawmakers and their spouses shouldn’t be barred from trading stocks.
“This is a free market, we are a free market economy, they should be able to participate in that," Pelosi said.
Here’s an excerpt from the article written by Camila DeChalus , Kimberly Leonard , and Dave Levinthal and published on Dec 15, 2021. “It is not illegal for members of Congress to trade stocks. But Pelosi was responding to a question from Business Insider.com, which released an investigation on Monday revealing that 49 members of Congress and 182 congressional staffers were late to disclose personal stock trades, which is a violation of federal conflict-of-interest laws. The Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act, also known as the STOCK Act, was signed into law in 2012 to prevent insider trading among congressional lawmakers and their senior staff, and requires them and their family members to disclose stock sales or purchases within 45 days.
Lawmakers and senior congressional staffers who blow past the deadlines established by the 2012 Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act are supposed to pay a late fee of $200 the first time. Increasingly higher fines follow if they continue to be late — potentially costing tens of thousands of dollars in extreme cases.
But accountability and transparency are decidedly lacking” by the Ethics Committees in both the House and the Senate.
You will probably not be surprised to learn that these actions are entirely bi-partisan! Both Democrats and Republicans are reported to engage in trading personal stocks and violate the reporting requirements on an equal basis. The net impression is that there are really no effective laws or rules that are effective in preventing ethics abuses by members of Congress in leveraging the special knowledge gained by Congressional members performing their legislative and oversight roles, for personal gain. There are really no laws to prevent Congressional members from leveraging privileged information for personal gain. The only law in this area requires REPORTING trades on a timely basis, and many Congressional members can’t even seem to follow those requirements.
This is hardly acceptable to most American citizens. These national leaders should place their obligation to serve the country. Their adherence to conflict of interest and ethical standards should be at a high standard, if they are to provide not only an example to the country, but to provide validity and integrity in the performance of their oversight and legislative roles that deserve the trust of the American public.
Our Constitution is a brilliant and wonderful document, but it is essentially a STRUCTURE document, one that defines a new government that had never existed in history. But in that document they left the definition of HOW to govern to the members of the new government themselves. But in a government that derives its authority from the consent of the governed, shouldn’t many of the basic rules of HOW to govern be made by the citizens? Doesn’t it seem that many of the rules Congress has made for themselves, such as the rules allowing the personal trading of stocks and requiring only the timely disclosure of these trades, with little or no accountability or consequences for inappropriate or illegal actions, have been made by the members of Congress for their own benefit, and not for the benefit of the country?
In my new book, “American Turning Point: Repairing and Restoring Our Constitutional Republic”, I propose 16 specific changes to the existing laws and rules on the behavior of Congressional members that determine HOW we are governed. I call these changes “Citizen Rules”, which would supersede many of the existing rules made by the members for how Congress operates, and would require members to put their duty to the country above their personal benefit.
One of the “Citizen Rules”, # 14 as enumerated in the book, would remove this issue by defining new rules for ethical behaviors to avoid many of the existing conflicts of interest allowed in the current rules, and significantly strengthening the requirements for transparency and accountability in this area. Specifically, this rule defines requirements for handling of non-salary personal income for the President, Vice President, and all senior elected and appointed officials. All personal investments, ownership in any business, and all other equity and income generating assets would be required to be placed in a blind trust, managed by a non-family third-party executor, with no contact with the executor during their term of office. All non-salary income would be directed to the blind trust. This trust must be established after winning an election or being appointed to a senior Administration position, prior to taking the oath of office.
This “Citizen Rule” is an example of how the citizens defining the rules and expected behaviors of their elected officials would change the nature of our politics and remove the leveraging of elected office for personal financial gain. A summary of the full list of “Citizen Rules” is available on the book’s website at www.citizenrules.org. Comments and/or questions can be sent from the website, and direct email contact with me is also provided. Citizens who seek action that can preserve and defend our Constitutional principles should consider visiting the website, and purchasing and reading the details in the book.