‘We are a free-market economy. They should be able to participate in that,’ Pelosi said.
All five members of the progressive Squad are choosing to stay silent on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s defense of the right of lawmakers to hold and trade stocks while serving, despite their vehement opposition to the practice in the past.
When asked at a press briefing whether she believes legislators should be allowed to invest in equities while in office, Pelosi replied, “We are a free-market economy. They should be able to participate in that.”
The offices of Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Cori Bush did not respond to a request for comment on what appears to be substantial difference of opinion between the progressive caucus and leadership.
As recently as a week ago, Ocasio-Cortez advocated for barring members of Congress from buying and selling stocks while in their posts, implying the risk of politics-facilitated insider trading, securities fraud, and public corruption. There is no ban yet on the books, meaning lawmakers are free to engage in active investing.
“It is absolutely ludicrous that members of Congress can hold and trade individual stock while in office,” she tweeted. “The access and influence we have should be exercised for the public interest, not our profit. It shouldn’t be legal for us to trade individual stock with the info we have.”
Pelosi has come under fire in the past for her husband’s lucrative stock trading, which has elevated the House speaker to one of the wealthiest members of Congress, with $46,123,051 in total assets, most of which comes from her husband’s financial dealings, a Business Insider analysis found.
While Pelosi herself has only reported her home in Napa, Calif. and a small checking account as assets, her husband’s investment portfolio has included companies like Slack, Tesla, Disney, Visa, Salesforce, PayPal, Alphabet, Facebook, and Netflix, all of which spend tens of millions of dollars lobbying the federal government each year.
Drew Hammill, a spokesperson for Pelosi, reiterated to the publication that the speaker personally does not have any equity exposure, although he did not address the more ambiguous conflict of interest of the couple’s combined wealth.
“The speaker does not own any stocks,” Hammill said. “As you can see from the required disclosures, with which the speaker fully cooperates, these transactions are marked ‘SP’ for spouse. The speaker has no prior knowledge or subsequent involvement in any transactions.”
Some lawmakers’ investment activity showed signs of disaster profiteering at the outset of the pandemic in early spring 2020. The evidence appeared to suggest that some lawmakers bet on an economic collapse with privileged information not accessible by the public, dumping their shares of companies that they expected to take a turn for the worst as Covid-19 reared its ugly head.
Republican Senator Richard Burr, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee who was privy to highly classified risk assessments for the country, was subject to an investigation after he sold between $628,000 and $1.72 million of his holdings on February 13 in 33 individual transactions. The stock marked tanked only one week after Burr unloaded his stock. Similarly, former Senator Kelly Loeffler let go of a stock she and her husband jointly owned on the same day that the Senate Health Committee privately briefed administration officials on the Covid-19 threat.
While the 2012 STOCK Act tightened insider-transaction regulations for politicians, members of Congress have historically profited handsomely from equity trading. A 2019 analysis of 61,998 stock trades from 2004 to 2010, conducted by finance professor Serkan Karadas, found that public officials’ portfolios outperformed the market by 20 percent.
Hammill, Pelosi’s spokesperson, clarified to Insider that she has no objections to promoting transparency in lawmaker investing, pointing to the merits of that 2012 legislation. “The STOCK Act exists to shine a bright light on trades by members of Congress,” he said. “Sunlight is the best disinfectant.”