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Stock Trades Are CORRUPTING Congress’s Decisions. We Have Proof. | The Class Room - YouTube
Channel: More Perfect Union
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Last summer, More Perfect Union
started a project
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that had not been undertaken
in nearly a decade.
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Reviewing the stock holdings
of every member of the United States House
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and of the Senate.
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What we discovered is that when members
of Congress buy and sell
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corporate stocks, they're not just padding
their own personal wealth.
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Something much more corrupt is happening here.
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You can see it by looking closely at two
major bills before Congress right now.
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Both of them have bipartisan support.
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Both were approved out of committee,
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and both are considered
a priority of the president's.
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But only one is on the fast track
to congressional passage, while
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the other can't even get a floor vote.
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Digging through Congress's trades,
we uncovered numerous brazen examples
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of the corrupting influence
of corporate stock ownership,
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and we realized the key difference
between those two bills.
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The one that’s set to be passed
into law benefits the stock
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portfolios of members of Congress,
and the other bill does not.
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I'm Krystal Ball and this is the Class Room
by More Perfect Union.
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How many members of Congress own stock?
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It's been years since any researchers
compiled the data to answer that question.
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Well, we just did, and the answer is 49.7%
of voting members of Congress own stock.
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That's 266 total members.
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62 senators and 204 representatives.
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Those figures include corporate securities
and options that are owned
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by the members, their spouses jointly
or by their dependent children.
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We found that 50% of committee
chairs and ranking members,
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the most powerful people in Congress,
own stocks. Plus four of five House
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Democratic leaders and four of six Senate
Republican leaders.
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Adding up the portfolios
of every member of Congress, we determined
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that they collectively own between
$218 million and $746.4 million
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in corporate stocks.
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We can't drill down on the specific amount
because the stock disclosure law
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only requires members to report a rough
range of the amounts that they hold.
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More than half the members of Congress
are millionaires, and stock
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ownership is one of the principal reasons
that members get richer
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while they're serving in Congress.
According to a 2012 study,
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The wealth of members of Congress
grew 15.4% a year,
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while the median working class American
only saw their wealth grow by 3.7%.
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Take House Speaker
Nancy Pelosi, for example.
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Her wealth grew from an estimated
$41 million in 2004
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to $115 million in 2018.
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In that same period of time
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Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell,
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he saw his wealth grow
from $3 million to $34 million.
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That's an increase of 1,000%.
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Has your total wealth grown by 1,000%
over that period?
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Congress is getting wealthier
while you are not.
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And it's principally
because they own these stocks.
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And here's the key point about why all of
this matters: because our elected leaders
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wealth is so tied up in stock ownership,
it seriously affects the decisions
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they make about which bills do
and don't pass Congress.
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Let's explain by returning to the Tale
of Two Bills that I mentioned earlier.
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So one of those bills would enforce
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stricter antitrust laws to crack down on Big Tech.
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The House version enjoys
bipartisan support and was approved
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by the Judiciary Committee months ago,
but it still hasn't gotten a floor vote.
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Speaker Nancy Pelosi wields the power
to call the vote, but she hasn't.
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Why?
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As the stock watches over on TikTok
have long known,
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Pelosi is one of the biggest traders
in all of Congress.
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That's right, you guys.
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Nancy the Whale has done it again.
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And Pelosi really likes tech stocks.
Between 2007 and 2020,
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Nancy Pelosi and her husband
made between $5 and $30 million
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in returns just from the
big five tech companies.
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That would be Facebook,
Apple, Amazon, Google and Microsoft.
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As of 2020, the Pelosi's own
up to $5 million in Microsoft stock.
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$25 million in Amazon stock
and about the same in Apple stock.
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And they keep buying more.
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All of these companies
would be impacted by that antitrust bill,
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leading to a direct financial
impact on the Pelosi family.
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The Senate version of the antitrust
bill also passed out of committee easily,
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with backing across the board
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from Amy Klobuchar and Cory Booker
to Lindsey Graham.
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But that bill hasn't gotten a floor vote,
either.
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Importantly, it lacks support from
powerful Finance Committee Chair
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Ron Widen, who describes himself
as a foe of Big Tech.
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Nobody has been tougher
on the Big Tech people than me.
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Widen owns a small fortune in
technology stocks,
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up to $3.5 million in Amazon stock,
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Apple stock, Google, Facebook,
Microsoft, Netflix:
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all the big ones.
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Wyden hasn't just withheld his support
for that Senate antitrust bill.
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He also authored a provision
that would punish other countries
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that try to regulate Big Tech companies
over antitrust and other issues.
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Likewise, some of the most vocal
Republican tech critics
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are also overseeing Big Tech regulation
while owning tech stock.
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Marjorie Taylor Greene,
who was banned from Facebook
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she owns up to $50,000
in stock of both Facebook
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and Alphabet, the parent company of Google
and of YouTube.
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Republican Congressman
Dan Crenshaw is a very active trader.
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He bought Google and Amazon stock.
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When pressed about it,
he admitted that stock trading
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is the only way he thinks
he can make real wealth as a lawmaker.
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No one will run for Congress because it's
it's you have no way to better yourself.
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Neither Greene nor Crenshaw have signed on
to a Republican petition
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to force a House vote
on that antitrust bill.
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So it's clear that lawmakers
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stop legislation when it might harm
their personal financial interests.
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But they also advance bills
that would help their financial interests.
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And that brings us to the second part
of our tale of two bills
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the United States Innovation
and Competition Act.
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Under this bill, known as USICA,
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Congress will give over $50 billion
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in subsidies to very profitable U.S.
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companies that make semiconductor chips,
ostensibly so that they can better compete
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with China.
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Unlike antitrust, U.S.
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USICA is on a fast track
to becoming law. Why?
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Well, our investigation
found that members of Congress own vast
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amounts of stock in chip makers like Intel
and Nvidia that are pushing for USICA.
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And as USICA has advanced,
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lawmakers bought up more
and more of those companies’ stocks.
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In March 2021, Finance Chair
Ron Wyden declared his support
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for the chip maker subsidies.
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In the months that followed,
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he and his wife, Nancy, purchased
hundreds of thousands of dollars in
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stock in Intel, Applied Materials
and other chip producers.
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Many other senators
are similarly conflicted.
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Senators Jon Ossoff, Sheldon Whitehouse
and John Hickenlooper owned up to roughly
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$5 million each in companies
that lobbied on that bill.
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Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama holds
stock in multiple companies
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pushing USICA.
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Applied
Materials, Texas Instruments, Nvidia.
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The list goes on.
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Senators Shelley Moore Capito,
Gary Peters, John Boozman, Tom Carper.
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They are all invested in companies
who directly benefit from this bill
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In the House,
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as of the end of 2020, members owned up
to $7.2 million in Nvidia stock alone.
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Speaker Pelosi or her husband
have purchased up to $6.54 million
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in Nvidia stock and options
in just the past twelve months.
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All in, More Perfect Union
found at least 26 U.S.
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senators and 97 U.S. House reps,
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nearly one in four members of Congress, now
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own stock in companies
that have lobbied on USICA.
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These lawmakers have their personal
fortunes
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tied up in an industry
they have the power to sink or to elevate.
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Many of their stock purchases
occurred as recently as 2021,
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when the bill was being actively
negotiated and lobbied on.
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And that's the tale of USICA.
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This bill will likely pass,
and many of the lawmakers
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that pushed it have a personal financial
interest in it passing.
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Stock trading conflicts of interest
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are not limited to just two bills.
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We found that they are systemic and
some involve matters of life and death.
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Missouri Republican Senator Roy
Blunt has been a vocal supporter
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and stockholder of weapons
maker Lockheed Martin.
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He has literally posted their commercials
to his Twitter account.
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In December 2020, the Senate debated
a bill to block the sale of $23.5 billion
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in Lockheed
fighter jets and drones to the UAE,
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the United Arab Emirates, due to that
government's violent rights abuses.
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Just one lone
Republican, Senator Roy Blunt,
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rose to speak in favor of the weapons
sales on the Senate floor.
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My personal view is it
would be a big mistake not to move forward
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with that arms sale at the time.
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At the time, Blunt owned up to $250,000
in Lockheed stock, we found.
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And by a narrow margin
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to the benefit of his portfolio,
the weapons sales were approved.
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Other Congress members
have gotten in on this action, too.
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House Republican Kevin Hern, the Budget
and Spending Task Force
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Chairman of the Republican Study
Committee, bought two tranches of Lockheed
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Martin stock last year,
totaling tens of thousands of dollars.
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Only two weeks after his last purchase,
Lockheed won an $11 billion
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government contract to modernize existing
fighter jets. And Wyoming Senator Cynthia
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Lummis bought up to $100,000 in bitcoin
on August 16th.
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At the same time that the Senate
was drafting new regulations
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on cryptocurrencies. Loomis
not only serves on the Senate
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Banking Committee, but was the lead
author of a crypto amendment.
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There's much more.
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But you see the pattern.
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So what can be done about it?
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In 2020, lawmakers introduced a bill
that would
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bar members from buying or selling stocks.
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But it never received a hearing.
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In 2021, supporters of a trading ban
tried to have it added as an amendment
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to House Democrats anti-corruption
bill, the For the People Act.
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But the Rules Committee,
which is controlled by Speaker Pelosi,
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wouldn't allow it.
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We have a free market economy,
they should be able to participate
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in that.
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Dan Crenshaw, a stock trading
defender, argues that members of Congress
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are no longer
compensated enough for the job.
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If you want only millionaires
and billionaires to run for Congress,
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then keep making sure
that we can't raise our pay,
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that we can't get a housing stipend,
that we have to just spend, spend
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or pay rent in two different places.
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We could debate whether members should
earn more or receive a housing stipend,
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but we do know it is possible
to have a long,
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successful career in politics
without owning stocks.
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After all:
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I don’t own a single stock or bond.
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In 1972,
when he was elected to the Senate, Joe
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Biden pledged never to own a single stock
or bond while serving in Congress.
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And he kept his word,
during his entire 36 years in office.
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If Democrats want to win back
the public's trust and eliminate doubt
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that their decisions could be swayed
by their investment portfolios,
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they need to ban
not only buying and selling stocks,
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but owning them all together.
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A new bill introduced by Senators
Jon Ossoff and Mark Kelly does pretty much
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this, barring all individual stock holdings
while in office, including holdings
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of spouses and dependent children,
except in a blind trust.
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This is not a new idea.
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We already ban FDA employees from owning
stocks in food or drug companies,
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and members of the Federal Reserve
can't own stocks in banks.
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It's just applying that same logic
to the people who make the laws,
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not only those who enforce them.
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After a public outpouring of criticism,
even Speaker Pelosi had to backpedal,
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saying quote, “If members want to do that,
I'm okay with that.”
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If Democrats
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want to be the party of the working class,
they should stand with working people
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by banning members of Congress
from owning individual corporate stocks.
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