On March 27, for instance, Mr. Bresnahan sold off between $100,001 and $250,000 worth of bonds issued by the Allegheny County Hospital Development Authority for the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. The sale came after a report identified 10 rural hospitals in Pennsylvania that faced immediate risk of closure, and a month after Mr. Bresnahan voted for the House budget resolution that paved the way for large Medicaid cuts.
Mr. Bresnahan’s May 15 sale of up to $15,000 of stock in Centene, the largest Medicaid plan provider in the country, also drew scrutiny. Centene’s stock plummeted by about 40 percent after Mr. Trump signed the domestic policy bill into law on July 4.
Mr. Bresnahan has tried to blunt the political peril he is facing from his trading activity, but so far his efforts have fallen flat.

In May, he introduced his own bill to bar members of Congress from buying or selling stocks, though they would be permitted to keep holdings they had owned before the start of their terms.
If they wanted to keep trading, they would have to create a blind trust, in which an independent party manages investments with no input from the owner, to avoid conflicts of interest. The legislation would not take effect until 2027.
Mr. Bresnahan also announced that he was beginning the process of establishing a blind trust for his own assets.
“I want the people I represent to trust that I am in Congress to serve them, and them alone,” he said in a statement at the time.

But he has not followed through on that promise, complaining that the House Ethics Committee was making it difficult for him to wall off his stock holdings. At the same time, his trade volume continued to grow.
“The ethics process is prehistoric, and it’s downright excruciating,” he told WVIA News in a recent interview. “It’s been a long process that really leaves people that existed in the real world and came from different careers in a bind, when you want to provide a life of public service.”
Mr. Bresnahan balked at the idea of simply halting his stock trading. “And then do what with it?” he said in the interview. “Just leave it all in the accounts and just leave it there and lose money and go broke?”

Still, as the political scrutiny has grown, Mr. Bresnahan has appeared to at least slow his trading. It has been more than a month since he filed a periodic transaction report, which members of Congress who trade stocks are required to do regularly to report stocks they have bought and sold.
Mr. Bresnahan, who is getting married on Saturday, declined to be interviewed for this article. A spokeswoman, Hannah Pope, dismissed questions about his stock trading, which she called an “obsession,” and she would not say whether he had stopped, or intended to stop, trading stocks. She noted that Mr. Bresnahan’s stocks are traded by a financial adviser without his input, and that he learns of them when the public does.

More than 80 percent of voters support banning members of Congress from trading individual stocks, according to public polling. As outrage with the practice has grown, lawmakers in both parties have sought to appeal to growing populist sentiment by trying to outlaw the practice. Last month, a key Senate committee approved legislation that would bar members of Congress, the president and the vice president from trading stocks.
Some Republicans, however, have argued that such legislation would discourage wealthy people who have had successful private sector careers from entering public service.

In making his case against the Senate measure last month, Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, said that banning congressional stock trading would “make it very unattractive for people to step up to the plate and run for office.”
Mr. Bresnahan, however, said that he wanted to end the practice.

“The public should never have to question whether their elected officials are serving the public or their own portfolios,” he said in a statement when he introduced his legislation.
But his legislation has not drawn a single co-sponsor, and he has not signed on to a stricter bipartisan bill that would impose an outright ban on stock trading by members of Congress, or require that they certify to congressional officials that they have established a blind trust for any holdings.

Mr. Bresnahan’s trading has made him a top target for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and other outside groups seeking to reclaim the House majority.
“His prolific stock trading is more than just a broken promise,” said Eli Cousin, a spokesman for the D.C.C.C. “It’s political malpractice and a scandal of his own making that will define his time in Washington and be a major reason why he will lose his seat.”

Republicans, for their part, are counting on a crowded Democratic primary they say will push candidates to the left and make it impossible for any of them to win a swing district that voted for Mr. Trump. Despite the stock trading issue, they say they view Mr. Bresnahan, who has deep local ties to the area, as a good fit for the district, and a well-known name.

Maureen O’Toole, a spokeswoman for the House Republican campaign arm, said the focus on Mr. Bresnahan’s stock trading was part of “desperate Democrats’ false attacks to distract” from their agenda.
The Democratic mayor of Scranton, Paige Cognetti, is expected to challenge Mr. Bresnahan, according to a person familiar with her plans. Democrats are enthusiastic about her potential candidacy and expect Mr. Bresnahan’s stock trading to be a core part of the case they continue to make against him.
With so many trades to choose from, one Democrat involved in the race described finding fodder for attack ads as being “a kid in a candy shop,” and called Mr. Bresnahan’s stock portfolio as an “opposition researcher’s dream.”

To wit: the Natural Resources Defense Council, a nonprofit environmental advocacy group, recently began a six-figure ad campaign against Mr. Bresnahan in the district, focusing on the stock issue. It highlights how Mr. Bresnahan voted to repeal clean energy tax credits after having made between $200,000 and $1.4 million from stock trades that included selling clean energy stocks and buying up fossil fuel industry stocks.

“He made out like a bandit,” the ad says. “Tell Rob to stop trading stocks in Washington.”

>>1427054
This barely feels like news anymore. And that in itself is bad.

>but nancy pelosi

lock her up too. owning or trading speculative assets of any kind (stock, real estate, precious metals, crypto, etc) while holding public office should be ILLEGAL FULL STOP

>>1427097
>>nancy pelosi
It really is a bipartisan problem. I was surprised when I looked up the stats. Democrats do it with tech stocks and Republicans do it with the energy sector and military contracts.
https://www.fool.com/research/congressional-stock-trading-who-trades-and-makes-the-most/
The only reason the congressman in the OP is getting such flack is because he ran on being a crusader against congressional stock traders, but he was by far not the most prolific or the richest Congressman doing it on either side. Hell, even MTG made over 3 million since 2021 and she's as dumb as a door nail.

>>1427058
>Some Republicans, however, have argued that such legislation would discourage wealthy people who have had successful private sector careers from entering public service.
I fail to see how this is a bad thing.
If your goal of being elected is to get wealthy, then you're in it for yourself, not your voting base. That would also reduce the amount of money being thrown at elections, where the side with the most money often wins in same-party competitions.

>>1427099
The problem is the politicians like that never reveal their ulterior motives until after they're elected.

>>1427151
That's why it's a good idea to cut it off beforehand. If the goal was to trade stocks when you can influence stocks, then removing that as an option might also remove those that would do the practice from the electoral pool.
More likely, they'll find a different way to game the system, but at least it will be a reprieve. And, it will show that people are definitely paying attention to backhanded deals.

What if we made newly elected officials sell their stocks and because they were elected, they're exempt from Capital Gains taxes. Now they'd also have to volunteer communications monitoring to never have their info privelage communicated to family or friends.

>>1427177
politicians are supposed to have blind trusts, but it's basically just a tacit admission that insider trading is extremely easy if you're a politician

>>1427179
Politicians like Trump and Rep. Bresnahan say they will set up a blind trust when they get into office but it never works out for some reason or another. Bresnahan said he would set up a blind trust but still hasn't. Trump said he would set up a blind trust but it was run by his sons and he ignored it anyway.

>>1427207
i mean we're at the point where trump can scam his own fanbase with golden bibles and useless cryptocurrency for a quick buck whenever he wants, the era of politics even having a veneer of respectability is over, for now at least. maybe once he destroys the economy that might change but who knows