Congressional stock ownership is ‘outrageous,’ says Rep. Mike Levin
Calls to ban members of Congress and their families from doing business or owning stocks continued to grow; California Democratic Rep. Mike Levin said all elected officials, regardless of political party, should agree.
“No member of Congress should be allowed to use material non-public information that they obtain as part of their job and trade stocks on that information,” Levin told CNBC Washington Correspondent Emily Wilkins at the CNBC CFO Council Summit in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday. he said. “This is outrageous,” he said.
On Tuesday, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, a Florida Republican, filed a habeas corpus petition that would force a vote on a bipartisan bill that would pave the way for such a measure.
Called the Restoring Confidence in Congress Act and introduced in September, the bill would not only prohibit members of Congress, their spouses, and dependent children from owning, buying, or trading individual stocks and other prohibited assets while in office, but would also require them to sell stocks, options, futures, and commodities they own after they are sworn into office.
Levin said he’s seen members of Congress do this firsthand. He recalled a meeting the legislature held in early 2020 regarding the far-reaching impact Covid would have on the country.
“Every member of Congress reacted to this differently,” Levin said. “My reaction was to call my wife and tell her to go to Costco and buy some hand sanitizer and Clorox wipes. Other people called their brokers and said, ‘Go to short-haul lines or buy Pfizer.’ That’s wrong, that’s fundamentally wrong.”
Levin called the current STOCK Act, which passed in 2012 and requires transparency in stock trading as well as laws regulating insider trading for members of Congress and other government employees, as “very weak and ineffective.”
“There’s no time stamp on when people bought or sold. There’s just a range and a date,” he said. “It’s very difficult for us to fully understand who did what.”
Asked whether he would support Luna’s impeachment petition, Levin said Democrats plan to consult with Reps. Chip Roy (R-Texas) and Seth Magaziner (D-RI), the two co-leaders of the Restoring Confidence in Congress Act, to make sure the measure is “something that can actually become law.”
“I don’t care if a Democrat does it, I don’t care if a Republican does it: it’s wrong,” Levin said. “To me, the only way to stop this is to ban it.”
Levin said that when he decided to run for Congress in 2017, he and his wife decided to sell all their individual stocks and invest the money in stock mutual funds instead, a decision that “worked out great.”
“It doesn’t mean we can’t participate in the growth of markets, but we won’t use material non-public information that I received as a member of Congress,” he said. “This is fundamentally wrong and everyone should accept that.”
