USA Today: Congress Quietly Defanging STOCK Act

The USA Today editorial board blasted Congress for its recent efforts to undermine the Stop Trading On Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act which banned members of Congress from profiting off of insider knowledge when making investments. 

As USA Today noted, a book by Government Accountability Institute (GAI) President and Breitbart News Senior Editor-at-Large Peter Schweizer, Throw Them All Out, prompted the STOCK Act’s passage. 

“The law passed in 2012 only after CBS’ 60 Minutes aired a scathing report, based on a book by Peter Schweizer, exposing the way members of Congress profit from their lawmaking,” writes USA Today. 

However, now that the law is being applied, members of Congress are busy defanging the law: 

Now, for the first time since the law was enacted, federal investigators are looking into whether someone in Congress leaked non-public information that was passed on to Wall Street and drove up prices on several health care stocks. 

And how did the House Ways and Means Committee react? It refused to turn over records sought by the Securities and Exchange Commission, stymieing the inquiry. So much for making Congress accountable to the same laws as everyone else.

As Breitbart News reported in April of last year, the House and Senate passed a bill that struck down key STOCK Act financial disclosure requirements that were designed to enhance transparency. 

The USA Today editorial board concluded that Schweizer’s original call for members of Congress to place their investments in a blind trust would go a long way in keeping lawmakers from engaging in the kinds of insider trading that would land average citizens in prison. 

“If Congress really care about ethics, it would ban free trips provided by groups that want something in return. And lawmakers would put their investments in individual companies into blind trusts,” writes USA Today.