Profiting from Public Office

Many posts have discussed political corruption.

Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen at Axios:

Imagine America put these questions to a public referendum:

1. Presidents and their family members, unlike other U.S. citizens, shall be granted lifetime immunity from federal audits and criminal investigations of their past tax returns.
2. Presidents and their family members can maintain active ownership of global business empires, profiting when government decisions directly benefit those specific businesses.
3. Presidents, while in office, can maintain massive personal crypto and stock portfolios that buy and sell hundreds of millions of dollars in industries directly regulated by their own administration.

How would you vote?It's hard to imagine more than single-digit support for any of these. Yet Trump is doing all three and paving the way for future presidents to do the same. That's why precedents by presidents often matter as much as laws themselves.

Between the lines: This is more than just a Trump problem. Look at the astonishing number of lawmakers trading and making money off stocks, often with insider knowledge of looming congressional action.

Unproductive Congress

 

Measured by the number of bills signed into law, the 118th Congress was by far the most unproductive since at least the 1980s.

Just under 150 bills were passed over the last two years. https://t.co/6Cu3SyFC3Q pic.twitter.com/KdIh7ijK4O

— Axios (@axios) December 30, 2024

Congress: Fresh Blood Surging, Institutional Memory Waning

Aaron Blake writes at The Washington Post:

You can say a lot of things about the U.S. Congress. One thing you can't really say, though, is that they've been in Washington way too long.

Come January, nearly half of Congress (48.8 percent) will have been in office for four years or less -- i.e. elected in 2010 or later. That includes 49.7 percent of the House and 45 percent of the Senate -- assuming GOP Rep. Bill Cassidy defeats Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu in the Louisiana runoff Dec. 6.

...
In addition, the average length of service in the new House will be less than nine years (8.8 years, to be exact) -- continuing a downward trend after reaching a high of more than 10 years last decade and in the early 1990s. (8.8 years is still on the high end historically, but it's one of the lowest numbers in the last two decades.)

Some lawmakers want to take up tax reform.  But the new Congress will have little institutional memory of the last major tax overhaul, in 1986.  Only a dozen House members of the 114th Congress served in the 99th.  Seventeen senators served in the 113th:  five were in the Senate at the time, twelve in the House.

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House members of the 114th Congress who served in the 99th:

Republicans Don Young (AK) F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (WI) Harold Rogers (KY) Christopher H. Smith (NJ) Joe L. Barton (TX)

Democrats John Conyers Jr (MI) Charles B. Rangel (NY) Steny H. Hoyer (MD) Marcy Kaptur (OH) Sander M. Levin (MI) Peter J. Visclosky (IN) Jim Cooper (TN)

Senators of the 114th Congress who served in Senate during the 99th Congress:

Republicans	Democrats
Orrin G. Hatch (UT) Thad Cochran (MS) Charles E. Grassley (IA) Mitch McConnell (KY)	Patrick J. Leahy (VT)

Senators who were serving in the House at the time:

John McCain (AZ) Pat Roberts (KS) Richard C. Shelby (AL) Dan Coats (IN)

Barbara Boxer (CA) Thomas R. Carper (DE) Barbara Mikulski (MD) Bill Nelson (FL) Harry Reid (NV) Charles Schumer (NY) Ron Wyden (OR) Edward J. Markey (MA)

The Federal Reserve and Its Deliberations

In chapter 18, we discuss the deliberations of the Federal Reserve. The House Financial Services Committee just voted for a measure to allow the Government Accountability Office to scrutinize these deliberations. Former Fed chairs Alan Greenspan and Paul Volcker wrote the committee to oppose the measure and express support for current law. The Wall Street Journal explains:

A 1978 statute excludes from GAO oversight the Fed’s monetary policy deliberations, loans to banks from its discount window and related activities to, in the words of a congressional report issued at the time, permit the Fed to “independently conduct the nation’s monetary policy.” A provision adopted by the committee Thursday would undo that. “We can assure you that this protection of internal deliberations in reaching decisions that will affect market conditions and could expose sensitive information about particular institutions is indispensible in the Federal Reserve’s conduct of monetary policy,” Greenspan and Volcker said.