In a knee-jerk reaction to concerns that too many people may be required to disclose personal financial data, Congress quickly and quietly approved legislation over the past 24 hours to repeal major portions of disclosure requirements designed to ensure enforcement of the nation’s new law against congressional insider trading. President Barack Obama should veto this bad bill, and lawmakers should go back to the drawing board.
Lawmakers should have taken a more reasoned approach and approved a temporary suspension of the disclosure requirement for certain executive branch personnel, rather than an outright repeal. That way Congress could take the time to scrutinize the issue carefully and decide on changes to the congressional insider trading law that would allow for both personal privacy and enough transparency to limit conflicts of interest.
After years of inaction, Congress was finally compelled by public pressure last year to apply laws to itself against insider trading in the stock markets. The “Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge” STOCK Act made congressional insider trading illegal and imposed online disclosure of personal financial activity by Congress and the executive branch so that compliance to the law could be monitored. Without this disclosure, the law will be difficult to enforce.
The STOCK Act mandated disclosure by approximately 28,000 executive branch employees, many not even senior-level employees, and Public Citizen agrees that this level of coverage may have reached too far. In response, we have asked Congress to consider appropriate remedies to change the scope somewhat to apply to appropriate senior-level executive branch employees.
Instead of this more sensible action, lawmakers hastily repealed disclosure for all but presidential appointees and members of Congress. The repeal (S. 716) even covers congressional staff, in an action that is both extreme and crippling to the STOCK Act’s enforcement mechanism. Unlike most executive branch personnel, congressional staffers have no conflict-of-interest restrictions on stock market investments.
Gutting a popular and much-needed law is unconscionable. Obama should veto this measure, and lawmakers instead should temporarily delay implementation of the disclosure provision for executive branch personnel below presidential appointees. Such a delay would provide Congress with an opportunity to scrutinize the issue more closely and offer more appropriate remedies.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
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There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
After the election, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
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