When members of Congress voluntarily take steps – as the Senate did Monday – toward banning their quiet privilege to use insider information to make profitable investments in stocks and securities, you know public confidence in Congress is at an unusually low ebb and they’re trying to regain trust.
But if they fail at the same time to ensure that the wealthiest Americans, who are also their biggest donors, pay income taxes at least at the same rate was Warren Buffett’s secretary, you also know they’re still dodging the remedy for this nation’s yawning wealth gap between mega-millionaires and multi-billionaires and the other 99.9 percent of Americans. And public trust still hangs in the balance.
Both of these issues are in play at the moment. There’s some progress on the former and none – nada, zero – on the latter.
Members of the Senate voted 93-2 on Monday to consider a bill to ban members of Congress from trading in stocks and securities on the basis of their privileged access to insider information. They glean that information from myriad closed hearings and committee meetings on military contracts, federal spending and monetary and economic policy decisions that have not become public. Which helps explain why so many members become millionaires after they get elected.
The bill the Senate plans to consider would also require members to disclose their purchase and sales transactions on stocks, bonds, commodities and securities on an easily searchable public Web site within 30 days. That would offer public transparency and some degree of accountability. Let’s hope they actually pass the bill.