On Wednesday, Business Insider posted an article which might partially explain how people who enter Congress as middle-class Americans seem to become millionaires very quickly.

The article reports:

Congress and top Capitol Hill staff have violated the STOCK Act hundreds of times. But the consequences are minimal, inconsistent, and not recorded publicly.

So we have no idea who is doing insider trading.

The article continues:

Congress has a spotty and inconsistent method for collecting fines from members and top staffers who break a federal law designed to stop insider trading and conflicts of interest, an Insider investigation found. 

Insider’s investigation of financial disclosures found that 49 members of Congress and at least 182 of the highest-paid Capitol Hill staffers were late in filing their stock trades during 2020 and 2021.

Lawmakers and senior congressional staffers who blow past the deadlines established by the 2012 Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act are supposed to pay a late fee of $200 the first time. Increasingly higher fines follow if they continue to be late — potentially costing tens of thousands of dollars in extreme cases.

But accountability and transparency are decidedly lacking. 

No public records exist indicating whether these officials ever paid the fines. Congressional ethics staff wouldn’t confirm the existence of nonpublic ledgers tracking how many officials paid fines for violating the STOCK Act. And 19 lawmakers wouldn’t answer questions from Insider about whether they’d paid a penalty. Ten other lawmakers said they’d paid their fines, but they declined to provide proof, such as a receipt or canceled check. 

The article concludes:

“If you are a member of Congress, you have this duty to not take advantage of information you learned because of your job,” said Gellasch (Tyler Gellasch, a fellow at the Global Financial Markets Center at Duke University School of Law), who previously served as congressional staffer to former Democratic Sen. Carl Levin, of Michigan, and helped draft the STOCK Act.

Virginia Canter, the chief ethics counsel at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said Congress’ laissez-faire approach to the STOCK Act “sends the message that they are held to a lesser standard than other government employees, and that they are above the law.”

Canter called lawmakers’ stock-trading habits “an accident waiting to happen.” Their difficulties complying with the transparency and accountability provisions in the STOCK Act underscored why members shouldn’t trade individual stocks, she added.

Spanberger agreed: “We have regulations, we have rules, we have standards for a reason. And not enforcing them or abiding by them creates fertile ground for people to behave improperly.”