The NPR Politics Podcast - Congress Pursues Good-Governance Reforms

Episode Date: February 10, 2022

With President Biden's agenda stalled in Congress, lawmakers are turning their attention to bipartisan reform proposals meant to increase public trust in government. Two ideas that have garnered attention: barring legislators from trading individual stocks and clarifying the Electoral Count Act, which sets the process for certifying presidential election results. This episode: White House correspondent Ayesha Rascoe, acting congressional correspondent Deirdre Walsh, and congressional reporter Claudia Grisales.Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Find and support your local public radio station.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Dawn from Fort Worth, Texas. I am on the eve of fulfilling a decade-long dream of returning to Bogota, Colombia to celebrate the completion of my PhD and show my spouse around the city I grew up in. This podcast was recorded at... It is 2.05 p.m. on Thursday, February 10th. Things may have changed by the time you hear this podcast, but I'll still be shoving my last pair of extra socks into my suitcase. Okay, enjoy the show. I'm so jealous. Safe travels. You sounded very excited, Claudia, about this time stamp. I am because I haven't been back. That's where my parents are from, Colombia. Very good food there, empanadas and lots of good stuff, as you may have seen in Encanto recently. So yes, very excited and I can't wait to go back. Well, hopefully you'll get back soon. Hey there,

it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Aisha Roscoe. I cover the White House. I'm Deirdre Walsh. I cover Congress. And I'm Claudia Grisales. I also cover Congress. Congress could soon vote on legislation that would ban lawmakers from trading individual stocks. Thanks to this effort from both Republican and Democratic legislators. Basically, I guess for however long people have been trading stocks, members of Congress have been able to buy and sell stocks. But now they want to change that. Why is that, Deirdre? It's really an issue that's had a really remarkable change in political momentum in the last few weeks. Lawmakers from both parties were watching a string of stories that came up after the pandemic.

Several lawmakers from both parties were investigated for potentially using information they learned in congressional briefings to trade individual stocks and make money. Those reviews did not turn up any actual charges, but they did present a political problem. And in one case, you know, there were political issues in a Senate race in Georgia. Kelly Loeffler made a bunch of trades that were questioned, as well as David Perdue at the time. In addition to the press stories, there's also this 10-year-old law called the Stock Act, and lawmakers have to file reports within 45 days every time they buy or sell a stock or their spouses or dependent children buy or sell stock. And over the last year, there's been more than 50 cases of lawmakers who failed to file these reports or filed them weeks or months late. So there's just a lot of outside pressure from voters and from members of Congress to try to remove this

perception that lawmakers can make money based on inside information. Part of the complaint seems to be that it doesn't have a lot of teeth. You've been tracking this for years. How does this track with what you've seen with other attempts to strengthen this? Right. I mean, Claudia, they passed this law called the Stock Act a decade ago because there was some bad press at the time. You know, after the financial crisis in 2008, there were several lawmakers accused of using information they learned from briefings with the Treasury Department and others to, you know, dump stock and get out of things that were losing money in the market. There was a big 60 Minminute story, and then there was this mad rush to pass this law. And the whole point of the law was to

create transparency, to say, look, if you're going to trade this stock, you have to report it so people can tell within this short time period whether or not your legislative actions had any influence on your personal financial transactions. The problem is a lot of people don't file the forms on time, don't file them at all, and the fine for a late report is 200 bucks. So there are cases of lawmakers making tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars on stock trades, not filing forms, and oh my bad, I'll just pay this $200 fine. There's not really a lot of incentive for members or not much of a hammer on members who aren't complying with the current law. So what would this new law do and would it have

teeth to stop all lawmakers from buying and selling stocks? There's several proposals out there on Capitol Hill, and many of them have bipartisan support. You know, one proposal is to ban lawmakers from trading individual stocks at all. And it would also apply to spouses and their children. Another proposal does the same thing and applies it to senior staff. A lot of staff on Capitol Hill have security clearances and learn a lot of information they could use to make money. Other variations of the proposal basically require lawmakers to put any of their individual stocks in blind trusts. So they would still be allowed to be in the market,

but they would not be able to direct and pick individual stocks. You know, the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, wants to extend any reforms to Congress, to the federal judiciary. She says there are judges and even Supreme Court justices who are hearing cases that have financial interests in companies before the courts. So there's a variety of proposals out there. When you mentioned Pelosi earlier, the fact is Pelosi has not always been supportive of efforts to stop lawmakers from trading individual stocks. Her husband does a lot of stock trading, right? So

is she now fully on board with this? Well, she's had an evolution on this issue, and it's unclear to me sort of where she is because she's said some things that sort of muddy the water about her position. The speaker doesn't personally trade stocks, but as you mentioned, her husband, Paul Pelosi, is a really active trader. I mean, there are cottage industry private companies that basically post Paul Pelosi's trade and believe that people can make money by mimicking what he does in the market. Pelosi said it's a free market economy. Members should be able to participate in that. But in the last few weeks, she's really decided to move on this. And it's because of pressure from her members. And she's basically said, look, if people want to do it, I'll go along with it. So what's the timeline on this? I know you said there are a lot of proposals, but when might we see some movement on this? If there are enough senators that get behind a consensus bill, you know, getting 10 Republicans to sign on to a proposal,

that could really speed up the timeline here. You know, there are some proponents of this who think the Senate could put something together as soon as March. Others in leadership say, you know, it's going to take some time. But, you know, I think we could see some action potentially this spring or summer. All right, let's take a quick break. And when we get back, we're going to talk more about reform, this time about how the country runs its presidential elections. And we're back. So the attack on the Capitol on January 6th happened as lawmakers were certifying the vote over the 2020 presidential election. Part of the reason why that date and that action, which usually doesn't get much attention, got so much attention last year was because of this idea, which is incorrect, we should make clear, that then Vice President Pence somehow had the power to overturn the results of the election.

Claudia, that incorrect idea, which led to an insurrection, has now developed into a new push for reform around something called the Electoral Count Act. So can you tell me a little bit about what that is exactly? Right. This is a more than century-old law. It dictates how the proceedings should go when it comes to the certification of the presidential election elections results. As you mentioned, Vice President Mike Pence was to play a ceremonial role. That's the correct interpretation of this law. However, former President Trump tried to come up with a new interpretation. And even up until the morning of January 6th was in some ways expecting Pence to make sure he could overturn the election

results. And Pence was pretty clear that day and has been even more so recently that he could not do that. And so this is the law that is gaining a lot of attention now in terms of making sure that there's no funny business, that this law cannot be misinterpreted in the future. So this is really about clarification, because we do know that the former President Trump has used the efforts to make reforms to the Electoral Count Act as evidence, according to him, that Pence did have some type of authority. And that's why they're changing it. But that's not what this is. This is them trying to clarify that that authority is not there, was not there then, is not there now. Exactly. They're trying to address those

weaknesses in this law. It was written in a way that was ambiguous and lawmakers and many other experts admit that. I'm interested in the politics of these negotiations, Claudia, because we covered the fight over the Senate trying to pass voting rights reform and trying to change the filibuster. And that all failed. And this issue was sort of like pushed aside during that. But it seems to have like a new momentum. Yeah, exactly. It was so interesting seeing lawmakers such as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer kind of knock down the idea of paying any attention to the Electoral Count Act, that that was weak sauce when we were looking at this larger issue of voting rights and improving access to ballots around the country. But now that that issue failed so dramatically, it was expected, they're left with other potential reforms. And this time,

Republicans are interested in the conversation. There's a bipartisan group in the Senate working now trying to see if they can come up with some sort of plan to reform not just the Electoral Count Act, but address other issues such as protecting election workers and also ramping up funds to ensure new levels of election security. And so there's a different kind of momentum there now and more interest from Democrats, even Schumer, who say maybe there's the potential for some sort of a deal here. And when might we see action on this, on this electoral reform? That's going to be tough. Deirdre, as you know, the Senate schedule is packed. We have a Supreme Court justice confirmation process to go through. A minor thing. Much less all these other issues, right? All these other issues to attend to. So

getting time on the Senate floor is going to be tough. That said, lawmakers who are involved in this process say they want to go through the regular order process that is going through the committees. They've met with leaders of the Senate Rules Committee who would have jurisdiction here on changing these laws. So they're still digging into what the text of a proposal could look like. So it's hard to say if it's something they could come forward with, some sort of a deal, because they're going to have to wrangle a lot of people on board. All the Democrats, at least 10 Republicans in the Senate to move forward. And that's going to take time, could be weeks. All right. Well, let's leave it there for today. I'm Aisha Roscoe. I cover the White House. I'm Deirdre Walsh. I cover Congress. And I'm Claudia Grisales. I also cover Congress.

And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.