SoylentNews

This Website Tracks Which Shares US Senators Are Unloading Mid-Pandemic

posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday April 15 2020, @05:06AM   
from the follow-the-money dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

In the wake of reports last month that four US senators sold stocks shortly after a classified briefing on January 24 about the risk posed by the novel coronavirus, Timothy Carambat, a mechanical and software engineer, created a website to make stock sales by every senator more visible.

In an email to The Register, Carambat, who runs a design firm based in Covington, Louisiana, called Industrial Object, explained he was motivated to create Senate Stock Watcher after news broke that Senators Richard Burr (R-NC), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), James Inhofe (R-OK), and Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) had dumped stocks before most people in America understood the implications of the outbreak. It is illegal for senators to buy and sell shares using non-public information.

Burr, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has been sued for alleged securities fraud, a charge he has denied. It is said he unloaded up to $1.7m in stocks in mid-February, particularly in hotel groups that would be later hit hard by the virus pandemic, all while receiving daily confidential briefings about the impact of the bio-nasty – and reassuring the public everything would be fine.

"As public servants, there are some senators making alarmingly large money movements at what would seem to be very fortunate timing in the market," Carambat said.

"I understand some senators were previously very accomplished businesspeople, but in my opinion, the level of access they have to information currently is highly privileged and it would only make sense to keep their own financial best interests at heart."

Details about the stock sales in news reports prompted Carambat to look into the source of the data, which turned out to be the US Senate Financial Disclosures website.

---

Original Submission

• Re:no, they exempted themselves (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 15 2020, @12:08PM

  by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 15 2020, @12:08PM (#983010)

  Actually, if Congress wants the Government-supplied health care, they have to get it off of the Obamacare exchanges [npr.org]:

  What type of insurance do our elected representatives in Washington, D.C., have? Is it true that they're insured on the ACA exchanges now and that any repeal and replacement will affect them too?

  Under the Affordable Care Act, members of the U.S. House of Representatives, the Senate and their office staffs who want employer coverage generally have to buy it on the health insurance exchange. Before the ACA passed in 2010, they were eligible to be covered under the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program. (People working for congressional committees who are not on a member's office staff may still be covered under FEHBP.)

  The members of Congress and their staffs choose from among 57 gold plans from four insurers sold on the DC Health Link's small business marketplace this year.

  Approximately 11,000 are enrolled, according to Adam Hudson, a spokesperson for the exchange. The government pays about three-quarters of the cost of the premium, and workers pay the rest. They aren't eligible for federal tax credits that reduce the size of insurance premiums.

  For some other members of Congress, declining exchange coverage was a political statement.

  "There are several who, because of animus to Obamacare, rejected the offer of coverage, and either buy on their own or get it through a spouse," said Sabrina Corlette, a research professor at Georgetown University's Center on Health Insurance Reforms.

  Proposed bills to replace the ACA don't affect this provision of the law, said Timothy Jost, a professor emeritus of law at Washington and Lee University School of Law in Lexington, Va., who has written widely on the regulation of health care and its reform.

  Here [opm.gov], from the OPM site:

  OPM issued a final rule to clarify the eligibility of Members of Congress and designated congressional staff for health insurance coverage under the Federal Employees Health Benefits (FEHB) Program. Section 1312 of the Affordable Care Act requires that Members of Congress and their official staff obtain coverage by health plans created under the Affordable Care Act or coverage offered via an Affordable Insurance Exchange (Exchange).

  During open enrollment there is a spot when you are walking through the yes/no type of questions on the web site where it asks you if you work for Congress.

  Now, as you probably know, back in the 80s Congress stood up the new 401-k-like retirement system and moved the whole Government over to it, except for themselves. They were selling how awesome the new system was, except that they were going to stay on the pension-based system.

  Parent

  Starting Score:	0		points
  Moderation		+2
  Interesting=2, Total=2
  Extra 'Interesting' Modifier		0
  Total Score:		2