Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) has slammed his colleagues in Congress who engage in insider trading, saying they should be “on Wall Street” instead of on Capitol Hill.
“Americans understand what’s going on with Congress,” Burchett said Sunday on the “Cats Roundtable” radio show hosted by John Catsimatidis on WABC 770 AM. “When they see their members of Congress making three, four, 500 percent returns, dadgum it, they ought not be in Congress, they ought to be on Wall Street.”
Burchett called it wrong and said “everybody knows it, and I think it’s crooked as a dog’s leg, and we need to outlaw it.”
On Sept. 3, a bipartisan group of legislators introduced a bill that would ban stock trading by members of Congress and their close family members.
The “Restore Trust in Congress Act” mixes together several past proposals intended to stop members of Congress from trading stocks.
Should the bill pass, lawmakers who violate the law would face financial penalties equal to 10 percent of the value of their investment and would be forced to relinquish any earnings from the violation.
“If you want a day trade, leave Congress,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), one of the bill’s co-sponsors, previously said. “It’s that simple.”
“We’re not going to judge what you did before now, but now that this bill is going to come to the floor — and we’re going to make sure of that — it’s your chance to get right with the American people because at the end of the day, Congress is not a casino,” Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) also said.
In August, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called for a ban on members of Congress trading individual stocks. Bessent specifically named former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and said they have “eye-popping returns.”
“People shouldn’t come to Washington to get rich, they should come to serve the American people, and it brings down trust in the system because I can tell you that if any private citizen traded this way, the SEC [Securities and Exchange Commission] would be knocking on their door,” Bessent said in the interview.