Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Monday slammed lawmakers who are allowed to make fortunes trading stocks whose value could be affected by legislation they vote on — while other laws prevent her from crashing for free at a friend’s pad.
“This blows my mind: House Ethics Rules prevent me from receiving a $100 gift card, or crashing at a place as I wait for rent [money], but somehow allow members w/ investment portfolios to write laws that will personally enrich them $1000s in their own stocks; potentially millions,” she tweeted in response to an article in The Intercept about efforts to stop lawmakers from trading stocks.
“This is the downside of the political stunt of voting against member allowance or pay increases,” she said in a second tweet.
“Politicians can get on a high horse about declining their own pay increase, and then write nefarious loopholes to allow use of leg power to make money in potentially unethical ways.”
Sens. Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Sherrod Brown of Ohio, both potential Democratic presidential candidates, want to put a stop to all trading by people in Congress.
Last week, they introduced legislation that would permanently ban members of Congress and senior staff from trading individual stocks.
“We should not be in the position of thinking about legislation in the context of personal investment,” Merkley told The Intercept.
“As long as you own stocks, it’s hard to rule [that] out of your mind. And the public sees it as a conflict of interest. We should not be in the position of thinking about legislation in the context of personal investment.”
Under the Ban Conflicted Trading Act, all members would have six months after enactment to divest their shares.
Merkel spoke after revelations that Oklahoma GOP Sen. James Inhofe, chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee after the death of John McCain, was implicated in what looked to be an insider trading deal.
Days after meeting with President Trump and Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis to advocate for a military spending hike, Inhofe bought between $50,000 and $100,000 of stock in defense contractor Raytheon, which will likely profit from additional defense spending.
Inhofe claimed that a third-party financial adviser handled his stocks and made the purchase without him knowing.
Minutes after being questioned about the trades, he wrote a letter to his adviser asking him to no longer trade defense or aerospace stocks.