Congress Pursues Good-Governance Reforms

The NPR Politics Podcast

NPR

Politics, Daily News, News

4.5 • 24.9K Ratings

🗓️ 10 February 2022

⏱️ 13 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, this is Dawn from Fort Worth, Texas. I am on the eve of fulfilling a decade-long dream
0:06.5	of returning to Bogota, Colombia to celebrate the completion of my PhD and show my spouse around
0:12.4	the city I grew up in. This podcast was recorded at... It is 205 pm on Thursday, February 10th.
0:21.6	Things may have changed by the time you hear this podcast, but I'll still be shoving my last pair
0:26.3	of extra socks into my suitcase. Okay, enjoy the show.
0:33.2	I'm so jealous! Safe travels. You sounded very excited, Claudia, about this time stamp.
0:39.3	I am because I haven't been back. That's where my parents are from Colombia. Very good food there,
0:44.0	empanadas, and lots of good stuff, as you may have seen and encountered recently. So, yes, very
0:49.9	excited and I can't wait to go back. Well, hopefully you'll get back soon. Hey there, it's the
0:55.7	NPR Politics podcast. I'm Aisha Roscoe. I cover the White House. I'm Deirdre Walsh. I cover
1:01.1	Congress. And I'm Claudia Grisales. I also cover Congress. Congress could soon vote on legislation
1:06.6	that would ban lawmakers from trading individual stocks. Thanks to this effort from both Republican
1:14.7	and Democratic legislators. Basically, I guess for however long people have been trading stocks,
1:23.6	members of Congress have been able to buy and sell stocks, but now they want to change that.
1:30.8	Why is that Deirdre? It's really an issue that's had a really remarkable change in political
1:36.8	momentum in the last few weeks. Lawmakers from both parties were watching a string of stories
1:43.9	that came up after the pandemic. Several lawmakers from both parties were investigated for potentially
1:51.6	using information they learned in congressional briefings to trade individual stocks and make
1:57.1	money. Those reviews did not turn up any actual charges, but they did present a political problem.
2:04.6	And in one case, they were political issues in a Senate race in Georgia. Kelly Leffler made a
2:11.0	bunch of trades that were questioned as well as David Perdue at the time. In addition to the
2:16.4	press stories, there's also this 10-year-old law called the Stock Act. And lawmakers have to file
	...

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