Follow us on social

Will stock trade ban curtail DOD budget corruption?

Will stock trade ban curtail DOD budget corruption?

Lawmakers own stocks from firms that benefit from Pentagon contracts

Reporting | QiOSK

A new bipartisan proposal to ban members of Congress and their immediate family members from trading individual stocks looks to close a glaring conflict of interest between politicians who control massive government budgets, much of which go to private contractors.

The potential for serious conflicts of interest are quickly apparent when reviewing the stock trades of members of Congress's Senate and House Armed Services Committees, the panels responsible for the National Defense Authorization Act, the bill that sets recommended funding levels for the Department of Defense.

The 2024 NDAA authorized $886 billion, approximately half of which will go to contractors.

Five of the six most traded individual stocks by members of the House Armed Services Committee in the past year — Baxter International, Alphabet, NetApp, General Motors and KKR — had contracts with the Department of Defense, meaning that members may stand to benefit from the NDAA via their investments in companies with Pentagon contracts.

Members of the committee’s Senate counterpart, the Senate Armed Services Committee, also traded heavily in stocks. Like the House committee, five of the six most traded stocks by members on the Senate Committee — Cleveland Cliffs, Texas Instruments, Applied Materials, Humacyte and Chevron — had contracts with the Department of Defense.

The new “ETHICS Act,” introduced by Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Gary Peters (D-Mich.), Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.), and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) addresses this increasingly glaring ethics problem in members personal finances and would prohibit the sort of trades that members of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees are currently conducting.

“[I]f you want to serve in Congress don't come here to serve your portfolio, come here to serve the people,” Merkley told NPR

.


Billion Photos via shutterstock.com

Reporting | QiOSK
POGO
Top image credit: Project on Government Oversight

The non-empires strike back

Military Industrial Complex

The Bunker appears originally at the Project on Government Oversight and is republished here with permission.

keep readingShow less
Trump Netanyahu
Top image credit: noamgalai / Shutterstock.com

Trump appears all in for Netanyahu's political survival

Middle East

On March 25, Israeli Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu’s government passed its long-delayed 2025 budget. Had the vote failed, it would have automatically triggered snap elections — an outcome Netanyahu appears politically incapable of surviving.

While Israel cited stalled hostage negotiations and ongoing security threats as reasons for ending the U.S.-backed ceasefire in Gaza, Netanyahu’s decision to resume large-scale military operations just days before the vote also appeared aimed at shoring up support from far-right coalition partners such as Itamar Ben Gvir. The budget, framed explicitly by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich as a “war budget,” includes record levels of defense spending and a dramatic increase in funding for Israeli public diplomacy, a nod to the government’s attempt to counteract ongoing international condemnation of Israel’s military actions in Gaza.

keep readingShow less
JFK wanted to splinter CIA ‘into a thousand pieces.’ Why didn't he?
Top photo credit: Unredacted memo by Arthur Schlesinger (JFK files) and President John F. Kennedy, 1962 (public domain/Donald Cooksey)

JFK wanted to splinter CIA ‘into a thousand pieces.’ Why didn't he?

Washington Politics

When the final, declassified records from the John F. Kennedy assassination files were posted on the National Archives’ website last week, the first document researchers and reporters searched for was White House adviser Arthur Schlesinger Jr.’s June 1961 memorandum to the president titled “CIA Reorganization.”

ABC News led its initial coverage on the release of the JFK papers with that document, quoting Schlesinger’s now unredacted, dramatic, statistics that showed that the "CIA today has nearly as many people under official cover overseas as [the] State [Department].” The New York Times also featured that document with a headline “A Kennedy aide worried that the C.I.A. threatened the State Department’s power.”

keep readingShow less

Trump transition

Latest

Newsletter

Subscribe now to our weekly round-up and don't miss a beat with your favorite RS contributors and reporters, as well as staff analysis, opinion, and news promoting a positive, non-partisan vision of U.S. foreign policy.