STOCK Act Brings Lawmakers’ Finances Out In The Open

The “Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge” (STOCK) Act’s passage last April was a huge victory for transparency. The new disclosure requirements make it a lot more difficult for lawmakers to make use the privileged insider information they receive as members of Congress to build their stock portfolios.
As Center for Responsive Politics, who were instrumental in getting this legislation passed, reports, this past Monday, we saw one of the most important provisions of the STOCK Act come into effect:

Today, the public is finally starting to see some of the disclosure benefits of the STOCK Act, which also banned insider trading by members of Congress. The personal financial disclosure statements of House members, senators and congressional candidates all are now available via the websites of the Clerk of the House and the Senate Office of Public Records.

The House has been posting financial disclosures of current members online since 2008, but obtaining reports for senators and any candidates required a trip to Capitol Hill to print them out. The Center for Responsive Politics has been collecting lawmakers’ filings since 1996 and making them available on our website, OpenSecrets.org. We’ll continue to do so.

This is a great step forward for transparency and accountability in government. You can read more from Center for Responsive Politics’ OpenSecrets blog, and if you want to see what your lawmakers’ finances look like, the House and Senate have posted their disclosures online.