'We've Seen The Former Speaker Of The House Make Millions Of Dollars': Hawley Promotes PELOSI Act

At Wednesday's Senate Homeland Committee hearing, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) promoted the PELOSI Act.

Transcript

00:00Great. Thank you, Chairman Paul. Let me just say that we have an opportunity here

00:05today to do something that the public has wanted us to do for decades, and that

00:10is to ban members of Congress from profiting on information that frankly

00:15only members of Congress have in the buying and selling of stock. Eighty-six

00:19percent of Americans say that members of Congress should not be able to buy and

00:24sell shares of stock, individual stock, while they are members of this body. And

00:29they are absolutely correct. And the reason is, you can see it, there was just

00:32another ethics referral in the House last week. We've seen the former Speaker of

00:36the House make millions of dollars in profits. We've seen members of both

00:40parties, I'm sad to say, be investigated for their stock trades. And the reason for

00:45all of this is, is that quite frankly, members of this body are privy to

00:48information that the normal person just is not. Now, is that insider trading? It is

00:53not under the laws. Sometimes people say, well, we already have insider trading laws.

00:57We don't need a stock ban. Well, the information that members of Congress are

01:00privy to is technically not covered by the insider trading laws, but nobody really

01:04believes that the information that we get isn't valuable. It is quite valuable, which

01:09is why back during COVID, you saw members of Congress, of both parties, engage in a

01:14flurry of stock trading right after they were getting COVID briefings. Were members of

01:19the public getting those briefings? They were not. Were members of the public privy to the

01:22kind of information that was being given to members of Congress? No, they were not.

01:27And so when you look at what members of Congress are privy to, what they are able to trade on,

01:31the access that they have, it's just qualitatively different than your average Joe or Jane, which

01:37is why we ought to put into place common sense guardrails that say, if you want to be a member

01:43of Congress, you can put your, you want to, you want to save? Great. You can buy mutual funds. You can

01:48buy broadly diversified investment vehicles. You should not be able to buy and trade individual

01:53stock shares in which, frankly, we have an interest in the work that we do. We have information that

01:58no other people get, no other members of the public have. This bill would finally redress that.

02:03It is in substance identical to the bill that the committee passed last year, and I believe it is

02:10a huge step forward in finally addressing this problem. I urge a yes vote, Mr. Chairman.

02:14Mr. Chairman. Senator Scott.