Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Taking stock of congressional ethics

Congressional stock trading

Sen. Richard Burr is under investigation for selling millions of dollars in stocks following a briefing on Covid-19.

Pool/Getty Images

Schuman is policy director for Demand Progress. Olive is a writer and research assistant for the organization.

Last year, 57 members of Congress and 182 senior-level congressional staffers violated the law requiring them to disclose their financial conflicts of interest, according to painstaking reporting from Business Insider. When first asked about the violations, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi pooh-poohed the idea of prohibiting members from trading individual stocks, saying, “We are a free-market economy. [Members] should be able to participate in that.” In the months since, Pelosi has changed her public tune, asking one of her lieutenants to develop reform ideas behind closed doors.

What caused the turnaround? A mounting number of lawmakers endorsed various proposals to stop members of Congress from using the privileged information they regularly receive to make outsized gains playing the market. Pelosi, whose husband’s trades in tech stocks have earned their family millions and who has long been reluctant to move forward these kinds of reforms, was the perfect vessel to spark public outrage at the perfect time.


The world’s wealthiest cashed in on the pandemic; apparently, so did some members of Congress. Sen. Richard Burr is one of the more obvious exemplars. He offloaded millions of dollars of stocks after a briefing on the developing Covid-19 pandemic, apparently anticipating the March 2020 market crash. Burr is under investigation by the SEC and the FBI, and he has stepped down as chair of the Intelligence Committee — but has not seen any consequences from the Ethics Committee. (The Justice Department ultimately did not file charges against Burr, although one can imagine the DOJ must have considered the difficulty in proving such a case and possessed a reluctance to go after high-ranking politicians.)

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

In light of the pushback from members, and heaps of bad press, the speaker backpedaled. New bills to regulate or ban stock trading poured in; a bipartisan coalition called on Pelosi to bring legislation banning members from trading stocks to the House floor; and the House Administration Committee scheduled a hearing for Wednesday, March 16, to discuss the merits of the different proposals. The congressional rank and file, and the American people, oppose members personally profiting off information they receive as part of their public duties. Lest you think we are being unfair to Pelosi, many others in leadership of both parties and in both chambers have been reluctant to go down this path.

Making money public at the public’s expense is far from the only unethical, self-serving behavior in Congress. Banning congressional stock trading — if indeed Congress goes that far — is best understood as a small part of a suite of broader reforms that must address the perverse incentives warping how Congress functions and whom it serves. Reform must mean creating structural barriers to avoid temptation for members and staff, empowering congressional watchdogs to investigate instances of possible wrongdoing, and promptly holding wrongdoers accountable.

Currently, the House’s independent watchdog, the Office of Congressional Ethics, lacks subpoena power and is at times undercut by the House Ethics Committee, which is composed of members of Congress. The situation in the “upper” chamber is more dire: the Senate has no independent watchdog (although it should), and 2020 marked the 14th year in a row that the Senate Ethics Committee hadn’t recommended a single disciplinary action for misconduct — not even for the aforementioned Burr.

The STOCK Act, which was an attempt to place disclosure requirements on congressional stock transactions and was undermined before it fully went into effect, itself was a narrow reaction to a larger scandal. That law resulted from a big ethics scandal kicked off in large part by “A Family Affair,” a report by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington that was the basis for a “60 Minutes” report. In addition to apparent insider trading, the report exposed other unethical behaviors, including the misuse of campaign and political action committee funds and sweetheart deals for lawmakers’ family members who are lobbyists, contractors or “campaign employees.” The STOCK Act addressed the trading of stocks while other more encompassing legislation, such as the MERIT Act, went nowhere.

A decade later, it’s time we close the ethics loopholes exposed in 2012 by enacting stricter stock trading laws for members of Congress and outlawing other forms of self-dealing. That means passing one or more of the many bills banning members from owning individual stocks — anything less can be easily worked around. It also means going beyond stock trading and passing other legislation addressing long-standing ethics problems. Dozens of such bills have been introduced in the 117th Congress, including several bills regulating PACs and many restricting or prohibiting foreign funding of election activities.

However, as we learned from the STOCK Act saga, stricter regulations are just the start. Not even the best among the considered rules changes will have much effect without ensuring public transparency and addressing enforcement problems in the House and the Senate. That’s because Congress is effectively authorized to regulate itself. Unless the public has a window into Congress’ potential conflicts of interest and an external watchdog is empowered to investigate wrongdoing and hold violators accountable, Members will continue to act with little regard for the rules, with little reason to think there might be consequences for their actions.

Instead of an appetite for reform, we have seen efforts in both chambers to undermine the independent ethics process — the House tried to kill off OCE just a few years back, an effort we at Demand Progress beat back. Dozens of reform efforts are stalled in both chambers.

The House and Senate have to work for the American people and not for any particular interest. When the incentives of those who work in the engine of our democracy are turned towards fending for themselves — especially when fending for themselves is built upon deriving wealth from the success of giant corporate interests — the people’s business takes a backseat to the business of business. We can do better.

Read More

Congress Bill Spotlight: Preventing Presidential Inaugurations on MLK Day, Like Trump’s

Donald Trump takes office for his second term as the 47th President of the United States.

Getty Images, Pool

Congress Bill Spotlight: Preventing Presidential Inaugurations on MLK Day, Like Trump’s

The Fulcrum introduces Congress Bill Spotlight, a weekly report by Jesse Rifkin, focusing on the noteworthy legislation of the thousands introduced in Congress. Rifkin has written about Congress for years, and now he's dissecting the most interesting bills you need to know about, but that often don't get the right news coverage.

President Donald Trump falsely claimed his January 6, 2021 speech preceding the Capitol Building riot “had more people” in attendance than Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech.

Keep ReadingShow less
Just the Facts: Trump Administration Pauses International Student Visas
woman wearing blue denim jacket holding book

Just the Facts: Trump Administration Pauses International Student Visas

The Fulcrum strives to approach news stories with an open mind and skepticism, striving to present our readers with a broad spectrum of viewpoints through diligent research and critical thinking. As best we can, we remove personal bias from our reporting and seek a variety of perspectives in both our news gathering and selection of opinion pieces. However, before our readers can analyze varying viewpoints, they must have the facts.

Has the Trump administration put a hold on issuing student visas for this coming fall?

The Trump administration has paused new student visa interviews as part of an effort to expand social media screening for applicants. The State Department has instructed U.S. embassies and consulates to stop scheduling new student and exchange visitor visa appointments until further guidance is issued. However, previously scheduled interviews will still proceed.

Keep ReadingShow less
A Community Response to Disabled Gun Violence Survivors

A Community Response to Disabled Gun Violence Survivors

“What did you see once you got shot?” That might not be one of the first things victims of gun violence are asked, but it was the first question Access Living asked in a survey used to address and assess the many difficulties survivors of gun violence faced.

The nation’s gun violence crisis continues to be a significant threat to people’s lives, as it has claimed over 10,000 lives in the United States every year for the past 10 years, according to Gun Violence Archive. Only three months into 2025, there have been over 100 shootings reported in Chicago, and this will probably continue to rise, as in the country in 2023, on average, 118 people died of gun violence a day. According to the National Institute for Health Care Management Foundation, for every person who dies due to gun violence, more than two survive, usually with significant lifelong physical injuries that they have to learn to live with, along with the mental trauma of the incident.

Keep ReadingShow less
Improving Infrastructure In Washington To Benefit Both People and Nature

The 50: Washington

Improving Infrastructure In Washington To Benefit Both People and Nature

The 50is a four-year multimedia project in which the Fulcrum visits different communities across all 50 states to learn what motivated them to vote in the 2024 presidential election and see how the Donald Trump administration is meeting those concerns and hopes.

Washington State has historically fluctuated between Republican and Democratic preferences. While it was considered a Republican-leaning swing state until the 1980s, the political landscape shifted significantly in the following decades. Since 1988, the Democratic Party has won every presidential election in Washington, consistently achieving victory by double-digit margins since 2008.

Keep ReadingShow less