Members of Congress are enriching themselves using inside information unavailable to the people they serve, and Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) demands a vote on his plan to stop it, he told The Alex Marlow Show.
Although Congress passed the STOCK Act in 2012 after Breitbart News’s Senior Contributor Peter Schweizer’s book Throw Them All Out exposed the problem of congressional insider trading, Congress watered down that bill to ensure they could keep the gravy training chugging down the tracks.
Hawley has a bill to stop it – which he explained in detail to Breitbart Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow – and wants the Senate to vote on the legislation to show who is willing to end the practice.
“They use information that, frankly, only they are privy to to make millions and millions of dollars on the stock market,” Hawley told host Alex Marlow in Thursday’s episode. “People look at this, voters look at this, and they just want to vomit all over themselves. They want to vomit all over these representatives and vote them out.”
Hawley reintroduced the Preventing Elected Leaders from Owning Securities and Investments (PELOSI) Act in April to ban members of Congress and their family members from being able to trade or hold stocks.
The bill’s name is a not-so-subtle jab at former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who has made “hundreds of millions” of dollars from trading on insider knowledge, Hawley said.
A vote on his bill is the best way to ensure no other members can act as she – and many others – have, Hawley says. He insists no one can make Pelosi’s millions while following the law.
“You don’t do it legally,” Hawley said of Pelosi’s acquisition of wealth. “And here’s the thing, Nancy Pelosi and her husband last year, in 2024, beat every hedge fund in the nation, practically.”
Despite the bill’s naming after a Democrat, Hawley’s bill isn’t partisan, and members of both parties are offenders, he told Marlow – who discussed former Republican Rep. Spencer Bachus (AL), who opted not to seek reelection after being exposed by Schweizer, as the only member of Congress Andrew Breitbart ever called upon to resign.
“I don’t care if it is Democrat, Republican, whatever,” Hawley told Marlow. “It doesn’t matter.”
Hawley told Marlow the founders never intended for public servants to get rich from their service in Congress.
“And you shouldn’t be here forever, either. And those things are connected,” he added. He said its “no coincidence” that “the longer they’re here, the more ways they find to make money off of their jobs.”
Members of Congress “leveraging the office” to get rich is “the farthest thing from what the Founders intended,” Hawley said. “And really it’s a disaster for our system if it’s allowed to continue without any kind of check.”
The “simple” PELOSI Act is designed to institute maximum transparency, and the penalties for non-compliance are strict.
“We just ban members of Congress from owning or trading individual stocks,” Hawley explained. “My view is, if members of Congress want to save for their retirement or for their kids’ school, it’s fine. They can put their money in broad-based mutual funds like most other Americans,” specifying “I don’t mean industry-specific funds, I mean broad-based mutual funds.”
Hawley’s bill would prohibit blind trust provisions as well. “Those are too easy to get around and to manipulate,” he explained.
Implementation of his or similar legislation would be straightforward, with his bill containing “tough penalties,” Hawley detailed to Marlow.
“You give everybody, current members of Congress, a particular time period – six months, in the case of my bill – in which to divest and/or move their investments around to broad-based mutual funds,” he said. “After that, if they violate the provisions, if they trade individual stock, if they own individual stock, they have to disgorge all of the profits and pay a financial penalty on top.”
The public disclosure requirements ensure “the public can see exactly who’s doing what,” he said. “That’s the only way we’re going to get this stopped.”
Marlow and Hawley joked about how members of Congress were not rushing to support the bill, preferring to let the fox guard the henhouse.
“Congress loves to trade stock. I mean, that’s just the simple fact of the matter,” Hawley said.
Yet last year, after intense public pressure, the bill had some success before ultimately failing to become law.
“Last year, I was able to get this passed [out of] committee, but to get that committee vote, I had to work for almost two solid years just to get the committee vote,” Hawley explained. “And even then, Alex, members of Congress, including my own party, tried to kill it at the last minute.
“So, this is a heavy lift, because it is such a sweet little goodie that members of Congress love, which is why sunshine here is the best medicine. We’ve got to put people on the record. We’ve got to force a vote on this thing.”
The notion of prohibiting members of Congress from profiting off their insider knowledge is so commonsense that most Americans assume strong measures to prevent it are in place and enforced.
“I find most members of the public, they think that already stock trading is banned,” Hawley lamented. “They can’t believe when they read stories about Pelosi and whomever else. They can’t believe that this is currently legal.”
If Congress passes Hawley’s bill, the practice won’t be legal for much longer.
The Alex Marlow Show, hosted by Breitbart Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow, is a weekday podcast produced by Breitbart News and Salem Podcast Network. You can subscribe to the podcast on YouTube, Rumble, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify.
Bradley Jaye is Deputy Political Editor for Breitbart News. Follow him on X/Twitter and Instagram @BradleyAJaye.
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