AOC Teams Up With Matt Gaetz To Ban Stock Trades For Congress

An unlikely alliance has formed in the House of Representatives between Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Matt Gaetz as the duo, and several members of both parties, teams up to take on the rampant insider trading happening among members of Congress. The bipartisan group has put forth legislation that will prevent members of Congress from trading stocks, and any stocks owned by members or their families must be placed in completely blind trusts. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins talks about this unlikely team up.

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

Something very weird happened in the House of Representatives this week. And that very weird thing is actually a thing that used to happen very commonly in the House of Representatives. But you have Republicans teaming up with Democrats on legislation that would reign in corruption in the House of Representatives. And it's not just random Republicans teaming up with random Democrats, oh no, folks, it is Matt Gates teaming up with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Gates and a o c side by side on this very important and good piece of legislation. So if you need to take a minute to check and see if hell has in fact frozen over, please do that. But this legislation that a O C and Matt Gatz, and of course several other Democrats and several other Republicans have signed onto as well, what it does is it bans individual members of Congress and their families from owning and trading individual stocks.

If a member of Congress chooses to own any stocks, they cannot have any say or control whatsoever in how those stocks are traded, and they must be placed in a qualified blind trust according to this legislation. This is a great start. After all January 3rd of this year, a report came out showing that last year, 78 members of Congress violated the Stock Act. And the Stock Act, of course, is the piece of legislation that is meant to police members of Congress and their stock trade saying, you can trade stocks all you want, but you can't use any knowledge that you've gained from the house to trade those stocks. So basically it says you can't do insider trading, so just promise that you're not gonna do insider trading. The problem with the stock act is that if you violate it, the biggest penalty you might face, if you face any penalty at all is a $200 fine.

So you could make 20 or $30,000 off your stock trades from your insider knowledge, and if you get busted and they choose to penalize you, you, you just have to pay $200 and then it's done. Like at that point, it's just a trading fee really at this piece of legislation, again, from aoc. And Matt Gates would put an end to that. It would say, you are it. It is illegal for you to trade stocks. It goes in a blind trust. You have no say over it. You don't get to see what's happening with it. Your spouses cannot own and trade individual stocks. Either their stuff has to go into a blind trust. Your kids can't own stocks, your parents can't own stocks. This is a, a very big,

Comprehensive piece of legislation here, and it is sorely needed. Again, 78 members of Congress last year alone violated the Stock Act and not a single thing happened to any one of them, at least nothing of consequence. So I'm glad that we do have a little bit of bipartisanship left in Washington dc especially on an issue this important. Let's hope that it passes again with bipartisan support. You never know. But then again, this is reigning in the money making abilities of those members of Congress. So they may not be as keen on passing it as we would like to see, but this kind of legislation is sorely needed and I applaud A O c, Matt Gates and everybody else who signed onto it for putting petty differences aside for a moment and working on something really important.