Georgia Democratic Sen. Jon Osoff wants to introduce a bill that would ban Congress members and their families from trading individual stocks. It would stick while the person is in office.
This tweet came out today. It is bipartisan. But God forbid if we made even one “unusually well-timed trade.” Don’t forget Martha Stewart went to jail for this.
The New York Post reported that the bill “would also likely require lawmakers [to] put their assets in blind trusts.” Ossoff did this after he came into office in January 2021.
A blind trust is meant to avoid conflict of interest:
A blind trust is a trust established by the owner (or trustor) giving another party (the trustee) full control of the trust. The trustee has full discretion over the assets and investments while being charged with managing the assets and any income generated in the trust. The trustor can terminate the trust, but otherwise exercises no control over the actions taken within the trust and receives no reports from the trustees while the blind trust is in force. Blind trusts are often established in situations when individuals want to avoid conflicts of interest between their employment and investments.
The trustor and trust beneficiaries “have no knowledge of the investment holdings within the trust.” They cannot have “any control or say in how the investments are managed, including whether to buy or sell specific securities.”
Ossoff plans to file the bill once he gets a Republican co-sponsor. He might not get one because no Republican senator has come out against trading stocks.
The Senate has the Ban Conflicted Trading Act introduced by four Democratic senators. It only bans trading by Congress and their senior staff members.
The House has the TRUST in Congress Act, which is sponsored by Democrats and Republicans Chip Roy, Michael Cloud, Scott Perry, and Fred Keller. That bill would block Congress and their close family members from trading.
However, Ossoff and the House members will likely receive a beatdown by Nancy Pelosi because her husband has brought in millions of dollars trading stocks while she’s been in office.
The Pelosis took home millions last month:
The Democratic majority leader and her husband, Paul Pelosi, recently bought millions of dollars worth of call options for stocks including Google, Salesforce, Roblox and Disney, financial disclosures published Thursday show.The purchases occurred from Dec. 17 to Dec. 21 — just days after Pelosi insisted in a press conference that members of Congress should be allowed to trade individual stocks despite often being privy to insider information that can move markets.“We’re a free-market economy,” Pelosi told reporters, adding that members of Congress “should be able to participate in that.”
They sure love the free market when it helps them out!
The STOCK Act of 2012 forces Congress to disclose trades within 45 days. But we all know our employees in the Capitol never lie and are the most honest people in the world!
Except that Democrats and Republicans have violated that law a lot since it passed.
I doubt it will become law but I’m glad someone is talking about it. But Ossoff has been consistent. As I said, he put his portfolio in a blind trust. In October, he demanded Federal Reserve officials not trade stocks “following revelations that two regional reserve bank presidents had actively traded shares in 2020.”
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