House Democrats to propose ban on lawmaker stock trading – report
seekingalpha.com
seekingalpha.com
It can be watched here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJy8vTu66tE
The short version is that to win primaries you need money. Money mainly comes from corporations and rich people. Taking money from corporations and rich people creates a relationship where you have some loyalty to them or they can punish you if you don't act how they want. Thus the primary corrupting force in America is pro-corruption campaign finance laws.
The test for democracy is whether elected politicians pass legislation that the public at large wishes to be passed. Our very own Princeton did a study to answer this question.
The key finding: “The preferences of the average American appear to have only a miniscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.”[1]
In a very real, non hyperbolic sense we are in a plutocracy where money rules. We are not a democracy due chiefly to our campaign finance laws.
Here is a campaign that aims to work on this: https://act.represent.us/sign/problempoll-fba/
[1] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli...
They know what is best for them. It has nothing to do with what is best for the country.
As you are advocating for an oligarchy, I suggest you take a look at all the oligarchies around the world: don't you notice that they are all, without exception, terrible places to live, and not even good places for striving economies? Surely, there must be some fault in your reasoning.
On the contrary, most great countries in the world have something in common: they tend to be democratic, they tend to be quite equal in the distribution of income, and they also tend to be run as social democracies.
If you seized all of Bill Gates’ wealth it would fund the USA for 3 months. Do you think making Gates a pauper to fund our profligate politicians is more effective than letting Gates keep his wealth and invest as he sees fit?
I would argue Bill Gates is 10000x a better allocator of resources than the government. So maybe let him keep his wealth considering the government prints his net worth every month.
Do those with more resources owe them to chance, or did they do actual work?
Of those who worked for more resources, how did they achieve those resources? Are those ways actually in any way beneficial to society at large, or are they not replicable across wide swaths? Or are they possibly deliberately not beneficial to the country, but to those with resources?
Is it possible that growing wealth is easier if you already have access to wealth, merely by having that access?
Why do you think people with more resources actually know what they are doing? There is plentiful evidence to the contrary. (See e.g. Enron)
There is nothing inherent in a free market that means people with more resources are somehow more qualified to lead a country. Maybe they are, maybe they are not, but if you'd like to make that point, you'll need to go well beyond a simple declaration of faith.
I think it is an unpopular opinion for two primary reasons. There are inherent conflicts of interest. Being good at one thing (often being really good at being born with the right parents) does not necessarily correlate with decision making on behalf of society at large.
First. The greatest predictor of individual wealth is their parents’ wealth. This undermines the whole notion of the free market (or at least in its current state) giving rise to a meritocracy.
Second. Statistically, in a completely free and fair economy where all trade is zero-sum and every player will either loose or gain from a trade is up to pure chance, the money in the economy will accumulate to fewer and fewer hands as the number of trades increase. This is a pure statistical phenomena, meaning that as long as some players have more wealth then others, those players have an upper hand in any future trades for that reason only.
The meritocracy of capitalism is a pretty well debunked theory at this point.
If player1 can make the same widget with less resources than player2, its not zero-sum. That does often entail that player1 has some advantage, which could be any number of things. Is that OK?
It happens because the less wealthy player has a lot more to loose then gain in an unequal economy. That is even if a trade outcome is favorable to the less wealthy player, it is unlikely that the outcome is significant enough to change the balance. However it is much more likely if an outcome is unfavorable that it will significantly hinder any future opportunities for the poorer player.
On the other hand, a loss for the wealthier player is unlikely to significantly effect future outcomes for them. The only likely way for a wealthy player to have a significant loss if they land a devastatingly bad deal with another equally or more wealthy player. The chances of that happening at random is pretty low overall, and gets lower the wealthier you are.
If all of their other decisions are geared toward increasing their wealth, one has to wonder whether the decision to enter public service is also geared toward increasing their own wealth.
No, they don't, and there's not a rational or logical reason to infer they do.
Because he spent marginally less than Ted Cruz in the primary and less than Hillary in the general doesn't give lie to the premise at all. His 2020 reelection campaign spent ~$1 billion when including independent expenditures!
It's weird that people believe he is a political outsider. I've never heard a holistic/logical argument showing he is somehow more divested or decoupled from the implicit oligarchy class that ultimately is deciding legislation/law/executive orders these days.
I guess it's because he's bounced around parties and people are really firmly sold on the republican/democrat binary, seems superficial to me but I'd be willing to hear any cogent argument made.
However, another political reform I've toyed with in my head is secret voting in the House and the Senate.
Who cares if Raytheon or Disney "owns" a given representative if those corporate sponsors can't actually be sure that they're getting the votes they paid for. It would also neutralize a lot of the petty party line votes and manipulation. Every issue would ostensibly be decided based on the representatives' actual value system.
Obviously the downside would be that the public at large would be unable to hold their representative accountable for a particular vote, but that seems like the lesser concern compared to the very obvious corporate vote buying and party-line bullshit that happens today.
(Obviously disclosing your cryptographic vote receipt to a donor would be forbidden.)
In particular - they are much less likely to always blindly follow party lines, or corporate wishes, and I think there's value there.
How would you feel about a tweaked system? All votes are recorded, but the voting record is entirely withheld until 3 months before the next election for that seat.
The public is made aware of the voting record when it matters: During the next election. But during the term, they are much less susceptible to corporate donors and lobbyists, or pressure from members of their own party.
I want the politician I vote for to more or less follow the party line on important votes. That's why I voted for her.
I also think this leads to a preponderance of "division" politics - where the goal is to find a wedge issue that forces people to pick a side.
It's poor governance all around.
But there is generally little incentive to make votes private because in general legislators want to engage in credible credit-claiming (including about margins of passage and rates of bipartisanship) and parties want to preserve the whip as well.
You don't need a rollcall to know why you lost if not even enough people were in favour of your proposition to even force the actual count.
The intended reform would be that the rollcall would happen, yet the details (beyond a total Yes/No count) would not be released, presumably even to the voters themselves. This is a problem because it's hard to maintain trust in such a system.
For popular elections the scale is such that election monitors on behalf of interested parties can easily see a bunch of administrators correctly tallying votes and not focus in on the fact that, hey, voter #283204349 picked Jim Smith for Grand Leader -- however when you're talking about exactly 100 senators that's surely much harder to get right.
Just like on a jury for a court case, people are randomly selected from the population to sit on the legislature. They naturally vote their conscience, and when their term is up, they go back to their normal life. Because compliance with a bribers' instructions is unobservable, bribery is not incented.
The beauty of it is that you don't need to hold anyone "accountable" because there is no election, only random selection. Of course, the devil is in the details. Should prisoners be eligible for selection, or the illiterate?
I think explicit quid pro quo is far less impactful/prevalent then pro-corporate donors simply looking at the pool of campaigners and putting weight behind candidates that look like they'll vote how the donors want. All that requires is for the donors to be able to at least partially predict future behavior from candidates' current appearance. Secret votes won't change anything on that view.
Also, small dollar donors are driving polarization of US politics, so I'm not sure big donors are really the problem.
A constitutional amendment would nuke the current limitations, but it's impossible in practice for us to get there. On the other hand, as we've seen as of late, no decision by the Supreme Court is set in stone, so we could, in theory, get Citizens rolled back and then some. That also seems unlikely in the short term.
Not that this is in any way likely to happen, of course.
Notably, the Constitution does not grant the court the power of judicial review. The court granted itself that right. So in a battle between precedent and the text of the Constitution, I hope the latter would win.
1) Politicians decide to pull a fast on corrupting interests and start voting in the interests of society instead of focusing primarily on what benefits themselves and special interests.
2) Politicians decide to pull a fast one on society and start defacto selling influence more than ever, given they can simply publicly claim they picked the "right" side of any given bill.
Why would they have any incentive to do a good job?
Also, why would they have any desire?
Also, that seems like a lot of money. >95% of people would be happy with the $1M per year salary.
If you're selected for public service, then you're expected to do good for the country, and not just a specific monied interest. And that means not having to worry about money ever again. You win capitalism. Done. Have fun. Live your life.
That could also be done with annuities so that they get a "allowance" each month until dead.
If you have a system in place that can find and punish bribes - why not pay them a reasonable amount of money - and just eliminate bribes without spending $0.1T per year...
Famously, Singapore maintains a very effective, clean civil service by paying market rates, and sometimes for some ministers that is actually millions of dollars a year.
Your worth should be based on your skills (meritocracy) - not by winning the lottery and how much people will pay to influence you (luck).
And with deciding "merit" are the kingmakers, or the "meritmakers".
Congratulations. You now have created a new class of people who can take bribes and subvert leadership under the term "merit".
And, explain how one would calculate "merit"? In my experiences, meritocracies are monocultures that put forth their own biases as "merit".
1: money isn't the only form of bribery.
2: people who want more... will always want more and will never stop taking.
3: there is no good way to tell a person from someone who wants to give to help, and someone who wants to give to get something in return.
A more effective if morally dark methodology is publicly and viscously execute people who take bribes in this system.
As it is, I'm not sure the billion does anything other than ensure that the one policy absolutely every randomly-appointed political figure from the vague woolly liberal to the literal neo-Nazi agrees upon is zero inheritance tax...
I actually think it's a wonderful thought puzzle at the least.
The two problems I have with it though, are reflected in Lincoln's 1st inaugural address:
* His criticism of the idea that only the Supreme Court can determine constitutionality: the instant they are made in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their Government into the hands of that eminent tribunal
* His assertion that rule by a minority leads to tyranny or despotism.
If the thought puzzle could be extended by substituting the current closed party primary system with random selection initially - but still have a general election to choose among those candidates, you might find a way of creating a random-democracy hybrid.
However, in ancient Athens, one could become a magistrate (~a small-town mayor in modern times) through random selection. There was a term limit of one year, and you were only allowed to serve once in a lifetime. You also had to go through a basic examination called the dokimasia to be deemed competent.
Several other civilizations have used this method over history, typically with the intention of preventing corruption. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition
The people in legislative positions have a lot of power and there is no way to prevent that since the whole point is for them to have power to run the country.
Thus, it inherently attracts the sort of people who crave power and influence, which is exactly the sort of people who should not be allowed to have it.
So the only solution I can think of is to make it impossible to actively seek those positions of power, by assigning them randomly.
disclosure: I am a communist and find little value in capitalist reformations.
It's up to us to vote in people who would do this, but as pointed out, it's become difficult to do so in one election for one candidate, let alone the hundreds over the span of several years necessary to get people in place to actually make something positive happen.
> Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
So this puts us as requiring a constitutional amendment since only that can carve out an exception to something earlier in the constitution (see the 21st amendment which repealed prohibition) and unfortunately constitutional amendments have an extremely high bar to clear to make them happen. Not just a "half of the bastards finally agree" like a regular law ...
Per article 5 of the constitution:
> Amendments may be proposed either by the Congress with a two-thirds vote in both the House of Representatives and the Senate; or by a convention to propose amendments called by Congress at the request of two-thirds of the state legislatures. To become part of the Constitution, an amendment must then be ratified by either—as determined by Congress—the legislatures of three-quarters of the states or by ratifying conventions conducted in three-quarters of the states
75 percent of the state congresses have to agree to it on top of 2/3 of the federal congress.
It will never happen short of some apocalyptic social shift.
https://www.fec.gov/legal-resources/court-cases/citizens-uni...
It's convenient to blame money in politics, but if that were the case, Congress would at least get something done. For example, Facebook, despite being one of the most heavy lobbying spenders, has spent even more money establishing their content Oversight Board. If they could actually buy politicians, we'd have more regulation that happens to benefit big tech. Both the Republican solution of not allowing social media companies to censor content and the Democratic solution of creating more rules for moderate disinformation are beneficial to Facebook because they can offload some of the responsibility of moderation to the government.
As much as I hate to say it, and as someone who very much would like to have seen Sanders win either of those primaries, much of America is further to the right than Sanders, and seemingly have no desire to learn the difference between social democracy and socialism.
Superdelegates who had made public announcements were, through 2016, usually counted in running delegate counts by media and not distinguished from pledged delegates. Because the perception of winning votes is...actually, empirically, a powerful means of winning more votes, this meant the superdelegates were a significant influence on winning pledged delegates.
Because Sanders did so well in 2016, his faction won major concessions in DNC rules, including the erasing of first-ballot superdelegate voting rights (well, in the circumstances where they could matter). As a result, their collective thumbs were lifted off the nominating process in 2020 (now, Sanders did worse in 2020 anyway, both the situation and the field of primary candidates were different.)
I think representatives would still feel pressure to vote in line with the interests of their constituents and get results, otherwise they get replaced by the next exciting candidate.
My half-baked point is that the harm of voters NOT having access to this information is less than the harm of lobbyists and major donors having access to it.
On the other hand, it gives pols plausible deniability that they aren’t getting bought out.
Maybe I'm naive, though. I really do think nearly everyone in congress does want to make the world a better place, they're just lost/confused about how to go about that, often getting caught up in the game of staying in congress rather than using their time there for good.
The vast majority of people don't actually go and look up their senator's/congressperson's voting records, where as lobbyists do. So I think the voter disclosure argument is overblown; I don't think that voters actually need to know the exact voting records of their congressperson. I think voting should be selecting people based on character and rhetoric and then letting those people act as representatives.
It would be less democratic, but more functional (and more akin to what the founders imagined anyway).
Both houses essentially have this. It is called a voice vote.
I imagine blind voting would also serve to assuage the worries of legislators. If only we knew what each worried about.
"If it happens in Africa it is called corruption. If it happens in the US it is called lobbying".
I remember seeing a chart of how much money a Senator had to raise every week for their next race and it was stark bonkers (and this was in the 90s, before Citizens United). I just checked and the figure is even worse now. https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2019/02/state-of-money-in-p...
From that article, victorious senate candidates have to spend an average of about 16 million. So if you are already a Senator looking forward to your next race you have to raise about 80k a week!. And you are not getting that kind of money from the average citizen.
Money in politics is the root of most of what ails the U.S political system (not all, but a very big part).
>"If it happens in Africa it is called corruption. If it happens in the US it is called lobbying".
To add to this, we (americans) also never refer to our own elite class as oligarchs. That's reserved for other countries, because ours is a totally fair, democratic, and meritocratic society, and we're definitely not ruled by a small group of well connected rich people.
I'm puzzled by that. I thought it is generally well known Hollywood influences the Dems, and that the tobacco industry influenced politics in past (to name two examples).
I disagree that money is the root. Money is still one level above the true root, which is what the money is needed to buy: "Re-election." Thus, an alternative, though unconventional, solution is single-term limits. Once elected to any national public office, you can never run for that or any other elected office again. One and done.
This idea is not without it's share of potential problems, but I think that's true of any potential solution that has a chance of actually working. After thinking it through, I'm pretty sure I'd prefer the "single-term" set of potential downsides over the others.
If they can still get lobbying money by operating on the will of corporations, they could spend their whole term making money for themselves with no concern about re-election.
This solution just seems like hoping and praying the politicians we elect have higher regard for their legacy than their wallet.
Reason #1 is the Princeton study cited in other posts:
> The key finding: “The preferences of the average American appear to have only a miniscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.”[1]
It's already clear that "the will of the people" isn't being represented currently.
Reason #2 is "the will of the people" being reflected is not (and has never been) a design goal of the U.S. system of government. The U.S. was specifically created as a "representative democracy" and not a "direct democracy." This was debated extensively at the time of the founding of the country. They decided then (I think correctly), that it was better to have voters choose representatives, who, once elected, are supposed to vote what they personally think is genuinely the 'best' answer, not what they think 51% of their district's citizens want them to vote.
> they could spend their whole term making money for themselves with no concern about re-election.
This is already super against the law and congress members have gone to jail for it surprisingly often. The FBI has a special unit constantly searching, investigating and probing for any sign of it. At the same time as single-term limits, I would >10x the budget of these investigators. At least enough to ensure that more than one lobbyist meeting a year per legislator is a well-run Abscam-like sting operation and the politicians have no idea which one. I'd also substantially increase the jail time for such convictions, along with substantially increasing our one-term legislator's pay at least to $1M/year. The goal being to reduce the need to cheat while dramatically increasing the penalties for cheating.
Combined, the higher pay + higher penalties would have the effect of significantly increasing the $Cost to influence a legislator with money. While the single-term limit would greatly reduce the $Value of influencing a legislator. Having the ear of someone likely to be in power for many terms is much more valuable than having the ear of someone who's gonna be gone for sure next term. I think the combined result will substantially reduce the amount of illicit influence peddling, leaving our legislators free to simply vote their conscience - which is really the best result we can realistically hope for anyway. None of the "Suspiciously Got Very Rich While in Office" >5 term legislators accrued any significant wealth in their first term. Even with the current laws, penalties and underfunded FBI enforcement, the only way to get rich in congress is to do it over many terms.
If you really sit down and thoroughly ponder how single-term limits would actually play out in the real world, vs the results we are actually getting now (not what we should be getting), there are a lot of interesting impacts. For one, it's very likely to reduce the power of the two major duopoly political parties who've jointly controlled Washington for >50 years. While it would increase the viability of tertiary political parties who are currently irrelevant. It's also likely to increase incentives for tertiary parties to sometimes form meaningful alliances as we see in some European countries. Anytime anyone votes for any candidate OTHER than a Democrat or Republican, it's currently a wasted vote. Thus alternatives can't ever build any gradual, grassroots traction and things just grow increasingly polarized at the extremes.
Public funding of elections would help - take the current $2 they ask you about on taxes, and make that $100 or so. Then give proportional time to candidates with publicly funded money.
The other counterintuitive one is to bring back the secret ballot in Congress. Publicizing voting records actually makes lobbying more effective since the lobbyists can measure effectiveness of their $$. If you brought back the secret ballot, people are more free to vote their conscience without having to take the brunt of the blame for it (lobbying really took off after the elimination of secret ballots in the early 70s)
There's only 535 of these roles and as their employer (a voter), I'd much rather have them directly over-compensated by us voters than indirectly compensated by special interests. I think it's fair (and a good deal for voters) to basically buy an "exclusivity" agreement from our elected representatives by paying them openly to contractually commit to not monetize their influence or relationships after leaving office.
It's the same here in Europe, we are joking how elites in US legalized corruption and called it lobbying, it's really weird for us (outside of US), that people just go along with this state of things and do nothing about it, like almost whole population would be after some kind of long period of brain washing in US.
And he's wrong.
_That_ problem is caused by the lack of choice. The corruption is the laws passed to entrench the Republican and Democratic party as the only two practical choice on every ballot. The lack of accountability is a direct result of that and nearly all other sources of dysfunction stems from it. The amount of compromise every voter has to make to support their platform of least disgust is the problem.
You can have your candidates in any color you like, so long as that color is blue/red.
Here's a good summary of subsequent research that debunked it. https://www.vox.com/2016/5/9/11502464/gilens-page-oligarchy-...
Even if the study were true it shows that when economic elites (150k+) disagree with the middle class they get there way more often. (Btw it showed that the middle class and the rich agreed like 80-90% of the time on policy, and when they disagreed it wasn't by very many percentage points)
But a much more likely scenario than corruption is senators/representatives/presidents are all members of the economic elite, and all their friends are members of the elite and so it's no surprise they share the same opinions as their friends/wives/family members and socio-economic class.
Or do you think it's very likely that most federal politicians are extremely corrupt and not getting caught?
It might not be a popular opinion, but perhaps we should double the wages of US Representatives (they currently make $175k—not a lot in Washington DC). Is paying US representatives $350k worth the money?
First, a bigger financial cushion for representatives might reduce financial corruption. Second, a bigger salary might attract more talented leaders. Potentially, paying higher salaries would increase the quality of US governance. God, imagine if we could just pay for increased quality in government leaders!
TIL that in 1789, the US president made $25k—- worth $800k in 2022. But today, the US president makes $400k. Why try to save money on presidents and politicians?
Most corruption isn't someone dropping off a bag of money. It's an organization donating a bunch of money so they can put somebody intelligent charming and attractive in front of the senator who is going to have a really good argument why certain provisions are good for their constituents.
How about this: we can have some criteria like state of health, education, buying ability etc and call it well being index. If it increases politicians get a bonus. If it decreases they pay fine.
This gets thrown around a lot, but how often does this actually happen? I feel like we all assume it's true, but I wouldn't be surprised if this specific form of corruption were a lot less common than we think.
What happens if the majority of Americans want to pass laws against their best interest?
What happens if the majority of Americans want to pass laws that are deeply immoral?
Democracy and good judgment are orthogonal concerns.
> What happens if the majority of Americans want to pass laws that are deeply immoral?
Democracy and morality of policy are orthogonal concerns.
Isn’t that just rule of the majority? Since when has that been a test of a republic?
If this was ever correct, it’s certainly wrong today. Trump, for example, was primarily funded by small donors: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/04/us/politics/trump-fundrai...
That’s arguably a major force that’s destabilizing politics today. Technology makes it super easy to raise hundreds of millions from small donors. But the Act Blue and Win Red donors represent the most ideological segment of their respective parties. That creates a huge incentive to try and play to try Twitter audience by taking extreme positions. Going viral can be worth millions of dollars.
The concept of being the best country in the world (American exceptionalism [0]) is not rooted in fact. In actuality, it's propaganda designed to keep people within US borders instead of seeing them flee to much greener pastures around the globe.
If the US was a company, there'd be no question that we'd need to pay our leadership much better to attract top talent. We pay senators $170k a year to manage our country with a $20 trillion economy.
So what we end up with is activists who crave power and elites from rich families for whom $170k a year is a rounding error. Those families then use the power from being in office to enrich their families even more.
One solution could be to double or triple pay for US representatives along with banning stock trading and things like "speaking fees."
Something that makes it hard for rich people to represent poor people without losing some wealth seems great to me.
At the very least, I don't see a problem with blind trusts or only investing in broad index funds and in a specific trading window. Politicians should be able to invest for retirement like everyone else.
I'm open to disallowing real estate speculation.
So, they can't own a home in a location they represent? I don't see that going over well. Your primary home is real estate. So is that little family cottage.
Also, congressional reps need to have a home is Washington. So, they have to rent there?
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2013/12/04/politics/real-alpha-house/ind...
After all it is positioning real estate as investments that contribute to its unaffordability.
That said, I don't think real estate is as easily abused as stocks. Much harder to influence the value.
They could always try renting. A lot of people manage to get by doing just that.
I don't think rewarding certain behaviors like sponsoring is good, because its too easily abused. When a KPI becomes a target, its no longer a KPI.
Bonuses and promotions always go to those who exceed them, and "improvement plans" or "restructuring" is reserved to those who miss.
Any imperfect measure that becomes a target gets pursued at the expense of the original intent.
There are probably 2 or 3 orders of magnitude too many laws currently in America (have you ever estimated trying to read and comprehend the entire law? Borderline impossible in a single lifetime even under very optimistic reading-speed assumptions etc).
If this metric becomes a target and ceases to be a good metric, that sounds ideal because it'll have the side effect of drastically simplifying the legal code.
To be blunt, your whole polemic reads like a CATO fever dream, which is the opposite of what I was suggesting; ideological contrivance isn't a solve, and complexity at a nation our size and scope ain't gonna get reduced to a nice pamphlet of rules. It's the same reason you can't run a FAANG company the same way you run a 6 person A-round company.
If their kids accept their inheritance, the rules apply to them too. The rules always apply to spouses.
Let them invest in whole-market funds / ETFs, but only allow withdrawls 5 years after leaving office.
Do you really want people greedier than that running the country?
Call me insane I guess.
We're a capitalist society. That doesn't mean "let companies do whatever they want, including buying politicians", it means "we use capital as a means of setting incentives to drive good outcomes". Let's use our capital incentives correctly to drive good outcomes from our elected leaders. They work for us.
Clearly we can't pay lawmakers $0 and expert high effort + no corruption.
is there any proof of any way that saying pay from 170k a year to ??? 1 million USD? a year would have any impact on the problems?
Do countries with less corrupt lawmakers pay more than the US? I doubt that...
This assumes ones level of corruption has to do with income. Is that true or are there other factors?
If lobbying is legal, than bribes should be too.
I'd chip into the "Pay Manchin a ransom of $50M to not do $50T of damage to the planet" fund.
Also selling your vote. Then we can at least choose the pol who sends the biggest check.
Certainly that's not solely due to how they are paid, but I'm sure it factors in.
3 of that is a rounding error from what our reps are currently paid.
Not sure what that argument is going?
No, it's not. Median household income is about $67k. Median salary (or, at least “median annual earnings for workers who worked full time”) is about $56k.
You only want people as politicians because they feel it's their civic duty to serve their countrymen, not because it's a lucrative career.
Being dependent on their salary for their lifestyle would make them more in touch than the current "use the power of the office to make money via alternative means" situation.
We also want successful, competent people to enter politics and we should not be giving them reasons to avoid it, such as forcing them to sacrifice their financial freedom and success.
Also, there is a very clear correlation between low legislator pay and corruption in other countries. Let's not make bribes and kickbacks more attractive by taking away other options politicians have for building wealth.
Why? I mean you just say that as if it's some universal truth. I don't see how focusing on civic duty is any better as a way to find good candidates than optimizing for high achieving people looking for lucrative fields to work on. I don't know which would yield better results but none is better by default in my view unless you have some romantic view of what politics should be, rather than what it is, a job.
This is how America got rid of large swaths of police corruption. Go back 100 years and bribing police was trivial, they made so little money that taking bribes was how they kept afloat financially.
Now days? An officer making $120k a year isn't going to take a $100 bribe to let a drunk driver go free.
In our current political system a politician has no accountability for accepting favors or campaign funds. There is no accountability for passing bad laws or being corrupt. This behavior will continue regardless of the base salary, or at least until there are repercussions against it. Currently there are none.
Hell, even today that's still the case in many countries with a large number of underpaid public servants - specifically China, where extorting bribes is considered a perk of the job.
Contrast to Singapore, which pays its members of parliament 3x the median household income and is tied for second place on the (lowest) Corruption Perception Index.
Also what does "make corruption illegal" even mean? Corruption takes many forms, and there will always be loopholes through which the most savvy can escape legal repercussions. I would much rather structure things so not being corrupt is just the easier, better, more natural choice. That's also not easy, but sounds more achievable to me.
President's pay comes with housing so my family could probably make that work, would be belt tightening--especially because I'd be on the hook for the food in state dinners and such.
Not that I think anyone wants me to be a senator or the president but rather I couldn't afford to be. I'm too wealthy for it to be an upgrade and too poor to take the pay cuts in stride.
When you're a senator, you also receive a lot of "perks" that reduce your overall expenses. Most travel comes out of an office fund, hotels, rental cars... many meals can also be expensed to the same fund, etc. Clothing even in some cases.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salaries_of_members_of_the_Uni...
Also, presidents don't pay for state dinners out of their salaries. The - state - pays for it.
The upshot of this is that when “the people” get pissed and start saying things like “Don’t pay congress until they fix the government shutdown!”, it unilaterally screws anyone who was working or middle class prior to election, as they now have no salary and can’t hold out as long as the multi-millionaire politicians who have a law firm back home or a huge stock portfolio paying their rent.
The idea that, under the current system, people are running for congress for the money isn’t exactly in line with how things currently operate.
Just don't elect them. When running for office in most places, being considered wealthy or coming from a wealthy family is a considerable hurdle to overcome (as is being extremely poor).
I wouldn’t call it a major hurdle. Many voters have inconsistent beliefs: They may think wealth is a sign of virtue and hard work during campaign season and then start saying “cut congressional salaries!” when they get angry, not realizing that they voted for people who are insulated from the very tactic they are pushing. It’s not enough to just say “well then don’t elect them”, we need to make sure the system of incentives we’ve created doesn’t funnel towards bad outcomes.
And that's where sortition (vote by lottery) is probably the best system, combined with a way to vote to remove and "Redo lottery".
Whomever is elected by lottery would be provided a "unswayable" amount of money, basically buying corruption away. They would be set for their life.
A lottery of all eligible citizens would also have secondary effects of encouraging high education across the whole populace, so that when Joe or Jane Doe is selected, they do a good job for the citizens.
That sounds great. I agree in principle.
However, I believe the parent is asserting that in practice, the kinds of people who are competent and able to effectively manage a large organization are the kinds of people that can make a lot of money in the private sector, and thus only go into public office if it is lucrative anyway.
Should it be lucrative because they can get bought by special interests, or should it be more lucrative simply because they get compensated above board more?
Perhaps someone who makes a million dollars a year would be someone less likely to be corrupted by a few more campaign dollars and kickbacks than someone making $170k.
So pay them less in the private sector as well. Our willingness to accept people hoarding unlimited wealth and power because "capitalism" while seeking to limit government as much as possible is a perverse incentive that's leading the US to becoming an oligarchy. If we're not willing or able to raise the quality of life for the poor, then bring everyone else down a notch or two.
1. The selfless (or the insane or crazy activists) 2. The rich 3. The corrupt
When you pay people a lot you also get
4. Competent hard working people who aren't necessarily selfless. (this is most people)
This group of people makes up the vast majority of people in the US, so why not have some of those people represent us.
Is there any data to back that up? Because it seems to me like people are falling all over themselves and saying all kinds of crazy shit just to get into office. It looks to me like we have the opposite problem - certain kinds of people CRAVE this power and attention and will do anything to get it.
As you mentioned, people love power. But there is a very, very thin slice of the population that has the ability to run for a federal office.
Congress passes laws. They aren't supposed to pass a vague law and then hand over the actual rule-making to unelected government bureaucracies.
The House is the people's house. Each Representative represents some relatively equal number of constituents. The Senate is the States' house. The state legislatures sends senators. The Senators represent the interests of their State.
We jiggered with this, and this is how rich people and corporations can influence so much of what goes on. The original system encourages accountability.
> hand over the actual rule-making to unelected government bureaucracies.
Are you referring to the judicial branch? Isn't that the system laid out in the founding docs?
> We jiggered with this
What jiggering are you referring to?
Without understanding your point, I'm all for this legislation as we've seen so many recent US officials enrich themselves with the power they wield.
I think they mean executive agencies like the FDA, FCC, EPA, etc. These agencies make rules that effectively carry the force of law. For example, the BATFE is (in)famous for arbitrarily changing their rules to criminalize things they don't like, with no new mandate from the legislature. These rules are effectively laws, because if you break them, you can go to jail for many years.
> We jiggered with this
I think they are referring to the 17th Amendment to the US Constitution, which made it so Senators are elected by the people instead of selected by state legislatures.
Congress in many respects has abdicated it lawmaking authority to the Executive by creating administrative agencies. Violating agency rules will not land you in a court with a jury of your peers as required by the Constitution either. You will end up in a court run by the accusing agency with a judge appointed by the agency. But hey, they aren't laws just rules with criminal and financial penalties for violating them.
No, I'm talking about the executive branch agencies. An example would be, Congress passes a protected species act; they empower the EPA to regulate how this protected species act is enforced; the EPA makes policy of how the protected species act is enforced.
This isn't completely insane, as it's a complicated process. But in actuality, what happens is the EPA becomes a revolving door for special interests ("I worked at the EPA for 5 years, and now I'm head of Environmental Quality at BP!"), corporations "encourage" lawmakers to carve out exceptions in the law that help or protect the corporations, and the agency in general can be used as a weapon to selectively reward or punish people or companies while the ones who could be held accountable--the Congressional lawmakers--can wash their hands of all responsibility. ("It's the EPA, I didn't take away your farm because they found a mushroom species that's protected.")
You're right that edge cases are hard. But the current paradigm of "enact sweeping reforms through vague legislation, and leave the details up to underpaid, overworked, and possibly ideological civil servants who can never be fired in any practical way" isn't sustainable. We know what happens, because it has happened.
Legislators participate in the revolving door policy, too. They do favors for corporate sponsors, and later they get a job there, or with a lobbying group that is funded by corporate sponsors, or with some other back-scratching deal. While doing something about insider trading is a good thing, that's not the real problem, and it feels to me that something like this is more like a bone thrown to keep the yapping dog quiet.
The real solution is to actually tackle the corruption it self (as proposed by OP).
People aren't paid while campaigning, and the US campaign "season" has grown to ridiculous length. It's not realistic to work some other job while doing it anymore (unless that job is being a member of congress), so it has become quite expensive.
If I could wave a magic wand and change things, here's what I would do:
1. Increase pay for senators by 10x, and for congresspeople by 5x.
2. Institute term limits, maximum of 4 consecutive terms.
3. After leaving office, total ban on direct employment of any kind for a period of time equal to the time spent in office. During this 'freeze' period, give them a pension equal to their pay while in office.
4. Strict limits on the nature of employment allowed for spouses/children/close relatives.
5. Strict limits on volunteer/nonprofit work, board positions, and anything else that isn't direct employment.
6. Lifetime ban on political lobbying.
7. Ban on any investing outside of a blind trust for the duration of their time in office plus the duration of the 'freeze'.
Overall, my thesis is that we should take away as much as possible of the opportunity and the incentive for corruption for the purpose of financial gain. We do that by paying officials gobs of money and preventing them from participating in the system outside of their defined role as a government official.
Otherwise totally agree. I'd even go so far as to say permanent ban on any employment with a step down salary/pension for life, halving with each multiple of the time in office.
Sure one can (theoretically, this is just not going to fly in practice because those who are already in power won't let it happen) prohibit direct employment and other official forms of affiliation, but it would be hard to prohibit receiving gifts, talking with good friends, getting invitations and so on. Yes, you can list such things, and let judges review it, but humans are creative and there always will be loopholes.
The reality is simple: Official pay is irrelevant. It's the system itself that helps or harms, and most countries are plutocracies.
The current pay is more than enough. If anything, it could be extended beyond the term to guarantee quarantine periods between office and businesses.
Allowing stock trading is insane. Allowing the amount of campaign money currently circulating is also insane. Provide candidates with campaign funds and limit spending, so they can’t be indebted to corporations once in office.
Basically: just look at some country where politicians aren’t just racing around raising money, and ask “what’s done there and can the same be done in the US?”. This is the that-would-never-work-here thing again.
I think that the people I pay to write laws and run a large organization should have...substantial understanding and skill concerning the relation of the structure and content of law to it's pragmatic effects and the practicalities of running large organizations.
Why would I want anything else?
Do I want more diversity of choices? Sure, I want diversity of meaningful policy preference options that would result from having an electoral system that favored proportionality (which is pretty much the best pragmatic definition of representative democracy) rather than duopoly.
We need people who truly want to make a difference and take pride in the outcomes of their work. I'm thinking of the likes of "founding fathers" who came out of turmoil and persecutions to build something better. They knew they ain't going back to the shit they came from and they carried that forward for several generations. We no longer have that craving to do better. It's been long-lost during decades of enormous prosperity and chill lives. Our problems are miniscule in comparison to what they once were.
So now, we have people who don't give a shit about anything except for their iPhones and daily celeb videos on TikTok. It's this lack of curiosity and any kind of knowledge about the state of things from general population is how you end up with greedy sociopaths running everything in politics. This country needs a decade of actual turmoil to wake everyone up out of their idle stupor. Nothing will change until everyone is fed up and craving for normalcy. In other words - we're kind of doomed.
While there is currently legislation that requires congressmen to disclose their financial dealings, enforcement around it is incredibly weak.
Congressmen are supposed to disclose stock transactions within 45 days of when they are made, but in practice there are dozens of violations of this rule which result in hardly a slap on the wrist. I've seen a couple cases of politicians conveniently waiting till after election cycles to disclose controversial trades.
While I'm generally pessimistic about the odds of congress voting to regulate itself, I'm still hopeful that something comes from this push. There's certainly a lot of room for improvement.
Yes, Congress is reluctant to specifically legislate against itself, so to make it happens a stink must be raised.
The STOCK act passed 96-3, so while congress might not tend to be keen on regulating themselves, it's not completely allergic.
Interestingly, one of the 3 'no' votes on the STOCK act was later engaged in some of the fishiest trading I've seen around the start of COVID. Here's a visual I made on it:
https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/gwocvt/sen...
If binding resolution was an available tool for We the People, legislative body would work move together than separately.
I hope congress can get its act together and serve its constituents better before it comes to that, but it feels naive.
We need to establish age limits and get all the old greedies out of politics.
So many books cover the hideous nature of mob justice, so-called "revolutions", and their gruesome knock-on effects, there's really no excuse to be this undereducated about what you're saying.
Eh, I don't think it is. Most members of Congress aren't minting money trading stock. The revolving door is far more insidious. Pointing at this lets pass make minor reforms, chuck a surprise at the eternally cynical and keep the goose that lays the golden eggs.
The partisanship of the accusations also helps galvanize support. Republicans can claim to be sticking it to Pelosi. Democrats can better cover their flank. The base will eat it up. Nobody in finance cares. And like two members of Congress will be slightly diminished millionaires. Broadly, a win-win. (Even if more marginally than presented.)
Where does a politicians money come from? If they exclusively received their money from stock trading as opposed to lobbyists/donors, how do you think the policy decisions would change?
It's not huge, by rich-people standards (which is a legitimate concern, as it does lead to very rich people being more able to take politician jobs than regular people), but, what, you thought they relied on graft to buy their dinners??
I agree, and trading stocks is not keeping poor people from becoming elected officials either
Even as it stands, just relying on their Congressional salary, it can be difficult for Congresspeople to maintain a residence in their district and one in DC—which is a fairly expensive real estate market—which is effectively a requirement of their position. Within some fairly clear limits, increasing the salary paid to those in Congress would have a tendency to decrease their reliance on lobbying money, rather than increase their appetite for it.
Rather than paying our politicians more to hopefully prevent them from being corrupt I'd suggest putting them in prison anytime we catch even a slight whiff of impropriety.
They will if this ban is instituted
Am I mistaken? I thought most political position are paid positions. Currently north of $150,000 USD for members of congress, I think?
>pay for [...] research
Thanks for the laugh.
They might read research, but they aren't personally funding it.
You may wish to read up on the subject of government work, salaries, etc. before you go debating about it on the net. Most of this stuff is covered in early Civics classes, and as someone who presumably pays taxes, you might be interested in finding out where and how those dollars get distributed!
might read, or have someone else tell them the important bits. This cost money either way
> Through your taxpaying dollars, just like every other government worker?
If this were the case, why are the politicians even trading stocks to begin with? if they wanted money why not be a private individual and then there would be no scrutiny on trading stocks.
I was trying to clear up your confusion that staff (and other expenses) were paid out of a congresspersons $150,000 salary (which is also a bit higher than that btw).
I am trying to assert that political machines require money. Taxpayer money is one avenue the stock market is another.
I am also saying that the money allocated, by taxpayer money, may not be enough. One way to alleviate this tension is investing in the stock market.
If I am not mistaken, if this ban passes, would they not also vote to increase their salaries? (I would think so, because a source of income was made illegal) So, to conclude, I don't want to give more money to politicians. Let them make money in the stock market and actually enforce the laws already in place that governs their trades.
What is this hunch based on, given that you didn't know they had another $1,000,000+ to spend?
Politicians trade stocks
Homer's Brain: Twenty dollars can buy many peanuts.
Homer: Explain how!
Homer's Brain: Money can be exchanged for goods and services.
Mr. Cole: That money could be put to use, to gain more money.
Paul: Explain how!
Mr. Cole: Money can be exchanged for stocks and bonds. The value of these securities shifts over time. Performing analysis on these securities can help you produce probabilities on how the value may change.
At the first-ever minimum salary for Congressional (non-intern) staff (which actually doesn't go into effect until September), it could actually pay the salary for 22 people with a little left over.
And lots of work is done by interns, who now do get some pay ($20k is allocated to each House office and $50k to each Senate office of this purpose annually), but not much.
(Yes, any private employer doing this would have the Labor Department all over them for wage and hour violations. Guess who those rules don't apply to?)
https://crsreports.congress.gov/
You can also read them, they're pretty comprehensive and exhaustively cited.
They don't. The $174k-193k (the latter for certain leadership positions) is their salary. They also have individual staff budgets, and there are shared services with their own budgets (CRE, CBO, etc.)
I think the vast majority of US elected positions are unpaid or have a small nominal stipend, but, yes, federal elected officials are all paid (the salary, and even more the total comp, are...pretty minimal compared to the private sector for the kind of responsibilities involved.)
Lobbyists and donors give money to campaigns, which require untold sums of money these days, and a congresspersons power within the party is directly correlated to their ability to fundraise for the party.
As to their actual personal means of a congresspersons wealth, they’re paid fairly high salaries (close to 200k per year, which, despite the expectations of this forum is quite a bit for the US) and yes, they have the ability to engage in their own investments and business dealings on the side. Not to mention their incredibly generous pensions.
> a congresspersons power within the party is directly correlated to their ability to fundraise for the party
I agree, trading stocks is an easy, relatively passive way of doing this.
The main issue at hand is related to the fact that congresspeople are able to trade stocks on the basis of the insider information they have about upcoming legislation/changes to government policy.
There are laws in place that govern congresspeople's trades. These are ignored. They should be enforced. If congresspeople (or who?) are ignoring/not-enforcing the previous laws, what are they going to do with these new ones?
They have an annual salary.
What happens when they exceed the budget?
Why?
Is buying a particular car not an investment? what about a house? Buying and selling assets should not be criminalized. Having privileged knowledge is part of the game. Someone who cannot read and write is going to have a tough time in life.
Insider trading is already illegal.
Also, investing in a publicly traded company is a weird way of violating public trust. Its as if the public does not know it too can invest where their politicians have invested.
So keeping in mind this doesn't preclude lawmakers from investing or buying index funds or ETFs, but the reason is because they literally create legislation that benefits certain companies. CHIPS Act is a recent example.
So they can do something like buy stock in a company, and then advocate for a law to pass that benefits that company, and then make money by doing that. What we want to do is separate "what's good for me" from "what's good for the country" and remove conflicts of interest like that. There's no real reason for a lawmaker or their immediate family to be buying individual stocks. Instead it makes more sense for them to invest in something like a market index so that if there are incentives to be aligned they should be focused on benefiting the entire market instead of any specific companies.
You lost me here. Participating in society is okay. Maybe in the case of a judge, who is supposed to be impartial, this could be the case. But an insulated lawmaker is definitely not the way to go. If a lawmaker riuns his financial status via the stockmarket, cool! Elect someone else.
> So they can do something like buy stock in a company, and then advocate for a law to pass that benefits that company, and then make money by doing that.
They could do same thing with real estate or vehicles or guns or anything else.
Imagine a politician attempting to pass a law banning guns but just before it passes that politician buys a bunch of guns.
Or, in 1930s, when an order was given that made it a criminal offense for U.S. citizens to own or trade gold anywhere in the world.
> What we want to do is separate "what's good for me" from "what's good for the country" and remove conflicts of interest like that.
Which politicians are interested in "what's good for the country" over "what's good for me"? And why is that why anyone is elected? I though we voted on issues, ideologies, directions-to-go-in and policy etc.
Every politician gets elected because what they'll do is "what's good for the country". And then we elect the next politician
Well that's kind of a bad argument, because if "we voted on issues..." we're just declaring that this is one of the issues (etc.) that needs voted on and the resolution is to prohibit these transactions...
So the issue we elected politicians to fix was politicians trading stocks. The ideology is that politicians shouldn't trade stocks because they vote on bills that they have inside knowledge on. The direction to go in is not allowing politicians to hold individual stocks. The policy is they can't own individual stocks going forward. And this is a thing we voted on.
> They could do same thing with real estate or vehicles or guns or anything else.
So I won't rule out everything but in your examples of guns and gold that would also prohibit the politician from selling those things or having to give them up as well.
While I see where you are coming from with the rest of your post, you're taking the stance that everything is effectively the same so why are people singling out stock trading, whereas I think there are shades of gray. Frankly, (as you mentioned real estate) the only reason that isn't in the spotlight as much is because it doesn't happen at the federal level but at the state and local level. There are a ton of injustices that still occur. Like buying a property and then voting to change the zoning or something similar.
Ah! So, we are approaching democracy. I am saying this is not an issue, there are others that are saying it is. Honesty, lets see if the House votes in your favor, my popcorn is popped.
> So the issue we elected politicians to fix was politicians trading stocks.
Some people see this as an issue, others don't. But, I understand that I am messaging in a place that has opinions that are different than mine. However, I owe my livelihood to having read this place as a teenager. So, here I am. I know when I one day run for office, the members of this board, likely, would not vote for me. I still like to exercise my thoughts and ideas in a familiar community.
> The ideology is that politicians shouldn't trade stocks because they vote on bills that they have inside knowledge on.
That is one ideology. There are many others. Can you think of a honest, good reason that a politician might have to trade stocks? If you can't think of good reason, you're ideology has given you bias against someone (in the same way that it has given you bias for someone else). There many different ways of life, most people think theirs is the best way.
> The direction to go in is not allowing politicians to hold individual stocks.
I don't think this is the best direction to go in.
> The policy is they can't own individual stocks going forward.
We'll see if the policy shifts in this direction
> And this is a thing we voted on.
Who is we? Not me.
> So I won't rule out everything but in your examples of guns and gold that would also prohibit the politician from selling those things or having to give them up as well.
But if the politicians aren't following current laws, why would they follow new laws? (The law I am referring to is the stock trade disclosure one, but there are others)
> You're taking the stance that everything is effectively the same so why are people singling out stock trading
Agreed
> Whereas I think there are shades of gray.
Agreed, even private citizens have to declare their trades to the SEC once a trade reaches a certain value.
> that isn't in the spotlight as much is because it doesn't happen at the federal level but at the state and local level.
I disagree, shifts in land value happen for many reasons including legislation. Are these shifts in value as volatile as the ones seen in stock market? The answer, IMO, depends on the time frame.
> There are a ton of injustices that still occur.
Agreed, but, More laws don't stop injustices, they just cause more people to have more interactions with law enforcement agents. I am not for that.
> I though we voted on issues, ideologies, directions-to-go-in and policy etc.
And I just explained that we are voting on these things and that disallowing politicians buying individual socks was one of the things that you categorized and that we are voting on.
So if you are arguing that we "vote in issues, etc." I'm just pointing out we do vote on issues and this is just one. So you either have to agree with what you said (and then agree with that I said), or refute your own comment. Your choice. There's no alternative to this scenario here.
> Agreed, but, More laws don't stop injustices, they just cause more people to have more interactions with law enforcement agents. I am not for that.
Then you propose no solution and expect things to just get worse indefinitely, without barriers, and for all of time. Which is kind of pointless and non-productive. Should we not have laws against murder or rape just because that begets more law enforcement?
And the public do not know what their politicians are investing in. Congressmen are supposed to report their trades within 45 days, but that's too long to make a difference in something like the current stock market.
> Congressmen are supposed to report their trades within 45 days
contradiction
> But that's too long to make a difference in something like the current stock market
I disagree, the strategy an investor deploys could make the difference. Blindly following someone else's trades is likely not a good strategy
that will happen regardless of the monetary incentive
> that benefit someone's personal finances.
I don't know how to contextualize this. There should be no slaves.
> "why shouldn't they be able to pass laws based on their investments?"
Hopefully, they are invested in their community, their city, their county, their state, their country. I don't know where you want to go with this. Obviously some people are... invested differently. Don't vote for these people
> You're looking at this from the wrong direction
we have different viewpoints, this why it seems this way
It’s not just that senators can front run institutional investors, it’s that they can make the rules that cause a stock to rise or fall. Allowing them to trade in financial markets directly creates perverse incentives. If they want to buy funds, bonds, or toss money into a 401k that’s fine. Hell, but property. Just not publicly traded stocks.
I'd have to be pretty independently wealthy before I'd consider applying for a job that practically required me to maintain residences in D.C. and my home state and only paid $174k/year.
I'd have to be wealthier to consider it if it cost an average of over $10 million to put together a competitive application, or I had to reapply every 6 years, and even moreso if, as is the case with the actual Senate, if both of those applied.
(Yeah, you can fundraise for the “application” costs, but that's a whole additional job on top of the job.)
No, you’ll get politicians for whom maintaining two homes, one in a high CoL location, isn't significantly difficult even without the income from the job. I mean, we’ve actually done the experiment and can see the results.
I’d much prefer the teachers and organizers be elected to Congress than the bankers and lobbyists.
The title of this thread is pretty misleading as members of both parties have been taking pot shots at each other over this issue for some time now.
Nancy Pelosi in particular has taken quite a bit of heat for years as her husband has made some amazingly well timed trades.
That would be a tremendous starting line.
Perhaps it should have been: In August, House Democrats to propose ban on lawmaker stock trading.
A fix could indeed involve commas:
House Democrats to propose, in August, ban on lawmaker stock trading
No, it wasn't.
It was scoped back, uncontroversially, to not apply to e.g. Congressional staffers. It still applies to "the President, Vice President, Congress, or anyone running for Congress" [1]. It also, more controversially, "eliminated the requirement for the creation of searchable, sortable database of information in reports, and the requirement that reports be done in electronic format, rather than on paper."
The law and its penalties still apply to members of Congress. It just permitted them to file on paper. That leads to crap like this [2]. Still, a long shot from repeal.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STOCK_Act#Amendment
[2] https://www.businessinsider.com/stocks-congress-trading-disc...
We have a vehicle for how such insiders can divest themselves of stock. It's called a 10b5-1 trading plan [1]. With advance planning the security holder can divest themselves of their holdings without discretion that could be misconstrued as trading on inside information.
Every member of the House, the Senate and the White House as well as all of their direct family members should be subject to those same restrictions. It is utterly outrageous that the likes of Joe Manchin can be chair of the Senate Energy Committee while directly benefitting from his brother's coal company or Nancy Pelosi's husband is just the most amazing stock trader in recent history.
We haven't even scratched the surface of the level of corruption by government officials here. High on that list should be the $2 billion Saudi Arabia gave to Jared Kushner's "fund" with a 1.25% management fee. Kushner can quite literally just keept in in the bank and collect $25 million per year.
*** TERM LIMITS ***
.
This is a proven strategy for tanking legislation.
Ten lawmakers on a linear political spectrum. Compromise is at 5. 1, 2, 9 and 10 said no; 3 and 8 grudgingly accepted. The measure looks poised to pass with six votes.
What can you do to tank it? Propose a sizzling 3½. 3 can't help but demand it at all costs. It's so juicy! And so close to the real intent behind 5! 8, meanwhile, horrified and betrayed, tells everyone to kindly fuck off. The centre holds. But the fringes have frayed enough to compromise passage.
We're in a rare state of inching bipartisanship. That mitigates the last decades' go-to strategy of lobbing landmines from the extremes, aiming to tear apart that delicate ground of negotiating space from the poles; to make moderation tantamount to treason. I suspect we'll now see more baiting of edges to chew away at the most-extreme moderates instead, an escalating game of No True Scotsman at the fringes.
Moving quickly is the executives job.
Term limits feel tantamount to demanding a lawmaking body comprised entirely of amateurs - instead of professional public servants.
The problem is incentives. It should be illegal for lawmakers to receive any money or other in-kind support for their re-election campaign from anyone other than the Federal Election Commission. Everyone who gets more than a few thousand signatures gets the exact same budget.
This way, everyone has the same war-chest, and has to run on their own merits - not on raising capital - and they're measured on their ability to succeed. It also instantly nerfs the allure of lobbying.
Moreover, lawmaker is the only job you have to re-interview for every 2-6 years.
I personally wish there was more turnover of a few long-standing incumbents who have managed to cling to power for decades, but the voters apparently don't, and adding term limits won't magically make the voters pick the people I'd rather see in those positions.
My gut reaction is that term limits are a significant change that probably create a lot of unintended downstream consequences.
Of all the things that make me question term limits, the number one is the question of experience. If you have someone with 30 years experience being a politician are they likely to be more effective than someone with 0 or 2 years experience? I think it's pretty jaded to answer no. If everyone has been around for 30 years it creates onboarding problems when people die or leave. I think that is the best argument for term limits.
I also question what is the exact problem term limits are trying to solve? Because I am not sure I understand what problem they are trying to solve.
The problems with American politics are:
Campaign financing
Two party system
The senate representing states (1 Wyoming person has equal say to 30 Californians)
Lack of faith in the election process/Electoral college
No way to make changes that are not aligned with the politicians themselves
Unfortunately I'm too cynical to think that something that obvious would be merely overlooked (rather than intentionally left out). If it's an incremental step forward, I'll take it anyway.
>>Democrats in the House of Representatives will propose a ban on lawmakers, their spouses and senior staff from trading stocks,
> Democrats in the House of Representatives will propose a ban on lawmakers, their spouses and senior staff from trading stocks, Punchbowl News reported Thursday.