Dear John,

Insider trading is illegal because it gives an unfair advantage to the person who happens to have inside knowledge of events that will affect the future of a given stock.

And who in the general public has more inside information on events affecting specific industries or the economy as a whole than a member of Congress?

It seems like a no-brainer that members of Congress shouldn't be allowed to invest in individual stocks, given their power to influence the industries they regulate. Yet they can -- and they very often do.

There’s an obvious solution: Bar members of Congress from trading individual stocks.

This is what the bipartisan Ending Trading and Holdings in Congressional Stocks (ETHICS) Act, sponsored by Sen. Jeff Merkely and Reps. Raja Krishnamoorthi and Michael Cloud, would do. Sign the petition to urge your Senators and Representative to support this bill now.

It infuriates me when members of Congress -- whether Republican or Democrat -- squander the public’s trust. In this case, there’s such an easy remedy, I’m ready to shout it from the rooftops.

Rather than investing in individual stocks, most Americans who own stock invest in index funds that go up or down based on the fluctuations of the stock market as a whole. It may be less exciting than betting on individual stocks, but it’s a sound investment strategy -- and insider knowledge has zero bearing on the index fund’s decisions to buy or sell.

So why do many members of Congress continue to invest in individual stocks instead? Could it possibly be that they learn useful things about what’s going to happen to the economy or individual companies before the rest of us do?

It certainly seems so.

In January 2020, before the COVID-19 shut-down, several senators, including Richard Burr, Dianne Feinstein, and Kelly Loeffler, made significant stock trades after receiving a classified briefing on the impending pandemic -- well before the public knew the full extent of the threat.

Then in the first weeks of the pandemic, with early knowledge of the development of vaccines, dozens of Congress members bought stocks in Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, and Pfizer.

Even if these were innocent investments that weren’t based on inside knowledge, they certainly smell like insider trades. They create the appearance of self-dealing and undermine public trust.

A huge amount of information about the economy and individual companies courses through Congress every day. There is no way to guard against the misuse of this information for personal profit. So why allow members of Congress to trade in individual stocks?

This is an easy and appropriate fix. It doesn’t penalize members of Congress or their families. They can still invest in index funds, like most other stock market investors. They just can’t trade individual stocks.

With distrust in government near an all-time high, even the appearance of a conflict of interest hurts our democracy. Sign the petition today: Members of Congress should not be allowed to own or trade individual stock.

Thank you for supporting this simple solution to prevent the misuse of information by our elected representatives for personal gain.

Robert Reich
Inequality Media Civic Action