Republican Senator Accidentally Makes Great Case For Banning Congressional Stock Trading

Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville accidentally made a great case for banning stock trading for members of Congress this week when he said that it would make fewer people want to become elected officials. That's actually a great thing - Why would the public want to elect someone who only wants to enrich themselves? Tuberville is also someone who violated the Stock Act 132 times in his first year in office, so he's the perfect poster child for corruption on this issue. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins discusses this.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville came out this week and accidentally gave us one of the best possible reasons why we should ban members of Congress from trading stocks. According to Tuberville, if we banned members of Congress from trading stocks, nobody's gonna wanna come up to Washington anymore. Which isn't that the point? Don't we want to get rid of the people who only wanna go to DC to make more money for themselves? Like that, to me, is the biggest selling point for banning members from trading stocks. Here is exactly what he had to say. They might as well start sending robots up here. You can't do it anything. I think it would really cut back on the amount of people that would want to come up here and serve. I really do. We don't need that. Says the man who has only been in office for 13 months after a ridiculously pathetic career as a college football coach.

Oh, and for the record too, Tuberville also violated the stock act 132 times last year. Again, his first year in office, he violated the stock act by not reporting his stock trades 132 times, basically averaging 11 times a month, the man was trading stocks and not reporting it as required by law. And he traded almost a million dollars worth of stock during that time. He was actually one of the biggest offenders. So it's not surprising that he would come out and defend this practice. Even Mitch McConnell has signaled that he's open to banning stock trades for members of Congress. Pelosi has finally flip flopped on the issue as well, after tremendous pressure. But we want to get rid of people like that. And, and I know he is, you know, oh, well it might make people not wanna come here. Good. Those are the people we don't want to come to DC. Nobody wants anybody serving as their elected official that's only in it to get themselves rich by using insider trading.

But apparently that's what Tuberville thinks he was sent to Washington, DC to do. But that's on the great people from the state of Alabama to deal with. Unfortunately, members trading stocks and not report it has become a massive problem within the last couple years here. As I mentioned, the stock act explicitly prohibits members from doing this and not reporting it. But unfortunately the penalty is usually, if it's ever even enforced, a fine of $200, which most members basically see as, okay, I have to pay a $200 fee to trade stocks based on knowledge that other people don't have. It's a pretty good incentive for them to continue to break the law, which is why the practice has to be banned outright for members of Congress and their staffers who also violated the stock act hundreds of times in 2021 alone.