The PELOSI Act would keep normal people from running for office and essentially create more career politicians, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) said during an appearance on Breitbart News Daily.
Host Mike Slater noted how the PELOSI Act sounds good on the surface, but he asked why so many conservatives are skeptical.
“What I did when I ran 2010, I sold all my marketable securities. I’ve been sitting on cash, losing my, you know what, for the last 15 years. So from a personal standpoint, I don’t do it, but, you know, we passed something called the Stock Act, which requires pretty much total transparency,” Johnson explained. “You know, you trade something more than $1,000, you have to report that on a quarterly basis, and particularly if you’re Republican, the press is watching you like, you know, so they’re holding you accountable.”
“But the biggest problem with that bill, first of all, there have been so many unintended consequences, but it required divestiture of businesses,” the senator said, noting that he did not initially sell his business, although he did eventually.
“But as I said in the hearing, this is legislative demagoguery,” he said, explaining that one could actually call this legislation “the career politician protection act.”
There are already far too few people who have experience in the private sector in Washington and know how hard it is to build a business, Johnson explained.
“We need more citizen legislators. We need more people that are successful in business to come into Congress with their wealth. Ok, they don’t — they’re not going to be doing insider trading, which, by the way, is already illegal. Again, you have pretty much full transparency, disclosure of any kind of trades,” he said, deeming the PELOSI Act a “completely unnecessary piece of legislation” that he believes will “dissuade the exact kind of people you want serving in government — people who know the private sector, understand how harmful government is to it.”
These people, he said, will be “completely discouraged from running.”
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“I know this firsthand, because after we passed the Stock Act, I was trying to get some retired CFOs to join my staff so I would, you know, understand international taxation, just have some great staff members” who “have a lifetime experience in the private sector,” he continued.
“I couldn’t get anybody to do it,” he said, adding, “We have the transparency. You have to report on this stuff. It already is dissuading good people from joining government.”
“Let’s make it more attractive for citizen legislators, for people from the private sector coming into government to reign government in,” he said. “So literally, the better name for this thing should be the career politician protection act, because those are the kind of people, you know… people who couldn’t succeed in the private sector, but they’re smooth talkers. They can get elected. They’re the ones I’d be most suspicious of.”
When asked if the bill would require one to sell his or her business before taking office, Johnson explained that there would be a panel which would “decide whether it’s going to be a conflict or not.”
“The other problem with it in committee is, literally, we didn’t get the bill, the actual bill, until we’re actually asked to vote on it,” the senator said, adding that Democrats are the “demagogues.”
Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Eastern.
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