Tracking If Congressional Aides Violate STOCK Act Is Nearly Impossible

The worst time suck was the day I showed up at 9:30 a.m. stupidly believing I’d knock out the pending research in a few minutes. The errand sign was already up, falsely promising me access within 10 minutes. When the bagel-toting staffer finally showed up 35 minutes later, I rushed to the first available terminal in the hopes of extracting what I needed before the first round of votes that morning. 

Silly me. 

The first computer failed to boot up properly. The staffer tinkered with it for a little bit before sliding over to the next terminal. That one wouldn’t even turn on. He made a call. He nodded knowingly before hanging up. And then the staffer asked if I could come back later. I said something about returning within the hour.

“Could you make it after 2 p.m.?” the staffer countered. 

KIMBERLY: It was clear from our visits that most people did not even know that they could access these records and that they rarely did so. The logbook on the Senate side hadn’t been signed in months, so our day-after-day presence at these computers was definitely out of the ordinary. 

Over on the House side, Congress’ lower chamber had its own problems. For weeks there was only one functioning computer terminal — literally the only one in the entire United States of America — available for viewing congressional staffers’ financial information. Camila, Warren, and I had to take turns using it.

Someone from congressional IT finally got a second computer working. But the system remained super complicated.

If someone trades stocks frequently, they generate reams of documents to comb through, and each must be separately downloaded. Some individual disclosures went on for 10 pages or more, so I had to scroll back and forth to see whether staffers had disclosed their trades late and which of their filings were the most tardy. I also had to compare the different amendments they filed to see whether some of the disclosures were actually late or whether an amendment was filed to fix a typo. 

Some of the filings were handwritten and incredibly difficult to read. (This turned out to be true for some members of Congress as well.) Printing the filings for closer inspection might have helped somewhat, but the House charges $0.10 per printed page, while the Senate charges $0.20 a page.

‘They want to make it hard’ to find these records

KIMBERLY: The public’s right to access data about top congressional staffers’ personal finances was supposed to be significantly stronger. Under the original STOCK Act that Congress passed in 2012, senior congressional staffers’ financial disclosures were slated to be posted online, just like they are for members of Congress. 

Craig Holman, a government-affairs lobbyist for the nonprofit watchdog Public Citizen, told me the law had also mandated that the disclosures be “searchable, sortable, and downloadable.” 

Obviously, that’s not the system we have today. Not even close.

So how did it all get so off track? One year after the STOCK Act became law, Congress quietly and quickly passed another bill that amended it. President Barack Obama signed it into law. This amendment gutted language that would have made it easy to search congressional staffers’ financial records. That’s how they all ended up in specific databases that could be accessed only on the Hill. 

Even the data on members of Congress — while posted publicly online and accessible to anyone with an internet connection — is clunky. For example, there’s no way to see how many members of Congress invest their money in a particular company, except to look at every member’s individual filings. (But you can soon do that using a database Insider has created!)

CAMILA: When we finally analyzed the congressional-staffer financial data we needed, we determined that dozens of staffers were weeks, months, or even years late in filing their mandatory disclosures. I followed up with the Legislative Resource Center about whether it keeps records for people who violate the STOCK Act’s deadlines and whether they paid statute-required late fees. But a clerk of the office said he could not comment on it because the information was “confidential.”

WARREN: Neither House nor Senate Ethics Committee staffers would speak on the record about their internal processes. They provided no official guidance on whom congressional staff with filing-related questions should ask to speak to at the committee — though the names of the lawyers and financial professionals who vet everything for each chamber are posted online. And they offered no explanation about whether documentation exists that would verify claims of having hashed things out with ethics officials one way or the other. 

The Senate Ethics team redirected every question to a dedicated phone line that evidently handles all incoming calls, while House Ethics stuck with the check-our-website mantra. 

CAMILA: I spoke with James Thurber, an American University professor and congressional-studies expert, and he said the lack of transparency about congressional staffers’ financial records is “intentional.” 

He told me that “they want to make it hard” to find these records. 

KIMBERLY: I called up Walter Shaub, the former director of the executive-branch-focused US Office of Government Ethics who now leads the government-ethics initiative at the Project on Government Oversight. I told him what it was like for us to dig up the congressional data. 

“This is absolutely shocking, which is not to say that it’s surprising,” he said. “But it’s shocking in that it’s truly appalling behavior by Congress trying to flout the spirit of its own laws.”

When people want financial documents from the executive branch, all they have to do is send an email asking for it, he told me. 

He also noted that my colleagues and I were all in DC when we researched congressional staffers’ financial information. But that’s not true for everyone who wants to access such a wide array of information. A political researcher from Fairbanks, Alaska, for instance, would need to take at least two flights, pay for a hotel, and trek to Capitol Hill. It would be especially difficult on days when the congressional document repositories have limited hours, such as during recess — or when someone like Camila, Warren, or me is monopolizing the limited computer terminals. 

Jason Briefel, the director of policy and outreach at the Senior Executives Association, the director of policy and outreach at the Senior Executives Association, a nonprofit, nonpartisan professional association representing career federal civil servants, told me that his organization supported amending the law in 2013 for personal safety and security reasons, particularly for those who work on national security issues or have to travel abroad for work. 

“We don’t want privacy to be a cloak, but being able to track someone down at their house where you know what their assets are and how much they are worth — that is a lot to put out there,” he said. 

Yet he also said he thought the law clearly could be improved. While he doesn’t think the information from senior staff should be posted online like it is for members of Congress, he said lawmakers should consider how to make it easier for journalists to access and sort through the records. He called the enforcement of the law “inadequate.” 

The system, as designed, doesn’t allow reporters or the general public to independently verify whether congressional staffers and members of Congress are paying fines associated with violating the STOCK Act’s filing requirements. We are mostly left to rely only on the word and honor of congressional staffers and lawmakers who may have violated the STOCK Act.

CAMILA: Because we couldn’t confirm with other congressional committees and offices on which lawmakers and staffers violated the law and therefore had to pay the fines, we contacted congressional staffers and lawmakers themselves independently to confirm if they paid a $200 late fee.

KIMBERLY: While several people were transparent about what had happened and even provided us documentation, many others refused to explain why they had violated the STOCK Act, saying only that “the matter was resolved.” Some forwarded our inquiries to press representatives who gave similar canned answers.

Shaub lamented that “Congress has a terrible history of not even trying to live up to ethical requirements it sets for both itself and the executive branch.”

“The problem is that the executive branch has Congress watching over it, and Congress has nobody watching over it,” Shaub said. “So the old saying ‘It’s good to be king’ rings true in this case.”