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Lawmakers' questionable stock trades prompt new bill
[BlabberBuzz] Tom Price, secretary of Health and Human Services, speaks during a news conference last year while he was still in Congress. (Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg)Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) introduced a bill Friday to close "ethics loopholes" in a five-year-old law that has failed to stop members of Congress from taking advantage of exclusive stock deals that are not available to the general public. Slaughter, a co-author of the 2012 STOCK Act, said she decided that amendments to the law are needed because of controversial, discounted stock purchases that were made by Rep. Chris Collins (R-N.Y.) and former House member and now Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price in 2015 and 2016. In one of Collins’s stock trades in 2013, he took part in an initial public offering (IPO) in a foreign market and did not disclose it on financial disclosure forms. A possible loophole is that ethics officials and members are interpreting that requirement to only apply to the U.S. market. The trades led to accusations of "insider trading" on the part of Collins and Price. "We are blessed people and we are here to do good for the country; we are not here to do good for ourselves," Slaughter said in an interview. Posted by: Besoeker 2017-04-29 |
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