English transcript

say that we we have an opportunity here today to do something that the public has

wanted us to do for decades and that is to ban members of Congress from

profiting on information that frankly only members of Congress have in the

buying and selling of stock. 86% of Americans say that members of Congress

should not be able to buy and sell shares of stock individual stock while

they are members of this body and they are absolutely correct and the reason is

you can see it there was just another ethics referral in the house last week

we've seen the former speaker of the house make millions of dollars in

profits we've seen members of both parties I'm sad to say be investigated

for their stock trades and the reason for all of this is is that quite

frankly members of this body are privy to information that the normal person

just is not now is that insider trading it is not under the laws sometimes

people say well we already have insider trading laws we don't need a stock ban

well the information that members of Congress are privy to is technically

not covered by the insider trading laws but nobody really believes that the

information that we get isn't valuable it is quite valuable which is why back

during COVID you saw members of Congress of both parties engage in a flurry of

stock trading right after they were getting COVID briefings where members of

the public getting those briefings they were not where members of the public

privy to the kind of information that was being given to members of Congress no

they were not and so when you look at what members of Congress are privy to

what they are able to trade on the access that they have it's just

qualitatively different than your average Joe or Jane which is why we ought to put

into place common-sense guardrails that say if you want to be a member of

Congress you can put your you want to you want to save great you can buy mutual

funds you can buy broadly diversified investment vehicles you should not be

able to buy and trade individual stock shares in which frankly we have an

interest in the work that we do we have information that no other people get no

other members of the public have this bill would finally redress that