Roy on congressional stock trades: ‘You shouldn't be buying and selling equities that you're voting on’

On Thursday, I joined Charles Payne on Fox News to discuss the TRUST in Congress Act, a bipartisan effort to promote transparency and reduce opportunities for members of Congress to engage in potentially nefarious activity by requiring them to put their assets into a blind trust while in office.

Along with my friend and Democratic colleague, Rep. Abigail Spanberger (VA-07), I led the reintroduction of our bipartisan TRUST in Congress Act (H.R. 336) in January of last year; I am glad to see the companion legislation recently introduced by Sens. Ossoff (D-GA) and Kelly (D-AZ).

Full clip of the interview is available here and some key quotes are below:

  • You shouldn't be trading and making profits while you're sitting there and serving in public office.
  • I really find it amusing, Charles, that Speaker Pelosi suddenly has an affinity for the free market and free enterprise. Where is she concerned about the small businesses getting absolutely decimated and destroyed with her mandates- all of the mask mandates- and all of the impact on the small businesses out there in the highly regulated environment? She doesn’t seem to care about them then, but when it talks about her wallet and fattening her portfolio, she’s all of a sudden grand in supporting the free enterprise.
  • This is something that does have some bipartisan potential. My friend, Abigail Spanberger, and I introduced this a year ago- important legislation, we think, because we don’t think that Members of Congress ought to be able to be capitalizing on their positions of power as public servants when you’re making really important policy decisions.
  • We can make sure that people who work hard and have small businesses and have equity positions when they come to Capitol Hill, can maintain those in a blind trust at arm’s length, but we shouldn’t have Members of Congress day trading, trading on a daily basis, buying, as you said, calls, puts, whatever, and betting on the market while they’re making decisions about Google and the power they have, about big pharma, big insurance, and all of these big corporations and corporate cronyism that are tied at the hip with big government and undermining small businesses in the process.
  • I want people to be able to make their wealth and prosperity, and then take that and then come to Capitol Hill and serve...But you shouldn't be buying and selling equities that you're voting on.
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