(PresidentialWire.com)- Back in February, Speaker Nancy Pelosi entered the room where she held her weekly news conference to see a crowd of reporters eager to ask her the same question. Reports had earlier indicated that Pelosi was likely to support some type of restriction on politicians’ ability to trade stocks while in office.
Reports show Democrats and Republicans had been promoting various measures to overhaul congressional stock trading regulations for months—all due to articles showing potential conflicts of interest in trades.
Pelosi and a handful of other prominent politicians didn’t favor it. She probably realized she couldn’t entirely dismiss the idea because there was strong support for a ban on legislator stock trading.
At her press conference, Pelosi remarked that if that’s what the Congressmembers want to do, then that’s what we’ll do.
Lately, many measures to limit stock trading have gotten widespread support in the House and Senate, but none of them have been put to a vote. The matter moves lower and lower on Congress’ ever-growing list of priorities.
This week, lawmakers working on a compromise proposal were confident that an agreement was near.
According to reports, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) claimed a bicameral coalition is working hard to put together legislation that could pass the House and the Senate, but they are not yet in a position to share details.
Because of scheduling and committee politics, the House of Representatives failed to pass a bipartisan bill requiring lawmakers to put their assets in a blind trust before they take office. Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-VA) claims the people who control the calendar don’t want to bring it to the floor.
Media reports show that as Congress neared adopting legislation allocating billions to the semiconductor sector, a recent purchase of $5 million worth of stock in the computer hardware firm Nvidia was reportedly made by Paul Pelosi. Speaker Pelosi claims to have had no prior knowledge of or involvement in her husband’s transactions.
Congress is a giant grift factory.
