More lawmakers are rallying behind legislation to ban stock trading by members of Congress.
Twenty-seven lawmakers recently wrote a letter urging House leaders to act quickly to bring “commonsense, bipartisan” legislation to the floor banning members of Congress from owning or trading stocks.
And while Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D-MA) was not one of the signees, he still signaled support for passing such legislation, which he said “should” happen sometime this year.
“I think that the public’s perception that members of Congress or other federal officials might have insider knowledge, that might be able to gain on that insider knowledge, is an unacceptable diminution of the trust that they could have in this institution,” Auchincloss said on Yahoo Finance Live (video above). “And right now, trust is the most important currency in our political sphere.”
The STOCK Act, which was passed in 2012, was intended to provide transparency in stock trades by lawmakers, who were required to report these trades within 45 days of the transactions.
