来源：《彭博商业周刊》
原文刊登日期：2021年6月22日
All too often, Congress seems to confirm voters’ suspicions that the rules don’t apply to their elected leaders. That goes double when it comes to financial matters. With trust in government at a low ebb, nothing is more important than to hold the country’s politicians to the highest standards of financial morality. Up to now, the efforts of Congress to police itself to the necessary standard have failed.
国会似乎经常证实选民的怀疑，即规则不适用于选民选出的议员。在金融问题上更是如此。在对政府的信任处于低谷之际，没有什么比让国家的政客们遵守最高的金融道德标准更重要了。到目前为止，国会为达到必要标准而自我监督的努力都已经失败。
In 2012, following a series of stock-related scandals, Congress passed a law designed to prevent lawmakers from using their privileged positions to gain an extra edge on the stock market. In theory, the STOCK Act would block them from trading based on nonpublic information acquired from their official duties and require them to report their trades within 45 days. Nearly 10 years later, it’s clear that the law hasn’t worked. Congress should scrap it and replace it with one that would be simpler and more effective: Legislators shouldn’t trade stocks.
2012年，在一系列与股票相关的丑闻之后，国会通过了一项法律，旨在阻止议员利用他们的特权地位在股市上获得额外优势。从理论上讲，《股票法案》将禁止国会议员根据从公务中获得的非公开信息进行交易，并要求议员在45天内报告股票交易情况。近10年过去了，这项法律显然没有起作用。国会应该废除该法案，代之以一个更简单、更有效的法案：国会议员不能买卖股票。
In May, Representative Tom Malinowski admitted that he had failed to disclose up to $1 million worth of trades in the stocks of medical and tech companies involved in the pandemic response. Yet Malinowski is hardly alone. Former Representative Chris Collins was sentenced to prison for insider trading.
今年5月，众议员汤姆·马林诺夫斯基承认，他没有披露自己交易价值高达100万美元的股票，这些股票是参与疫情应对的医疗和科技公司的股票。然而，马林诺夫斯基并不孤单。前众议员克里斯·柯林斯因内幕交易被判入狱。
Separately, the Department of Justice investigated four senators in connection with stock sales made after they received nonpublic national-security briefings in the early days of the pandemic. Although the probes were closed without charges, the perception that lawmakers were protecting their stock portfolios while the public was still largely in the dark about the looming crisis couldn’t help but erode trust.
另外，美国司法部对四名参议员进行了调查，这些参议员在疫情初期接受了非公开的国家安全简报后，出售了相关股票。尽管调查在没有指控任何人的情况下结束，但议员们保护自己的股票投资组合，而公众在很大程度上仍对即将到来的危机一无所知，这种观感只能削弱信任。
Not a single lawmaker has been prosecuted under the STOCK Act. It’s reasonable to ask whether it was toothless by design. For one thing, it still allows legislators to trade stocks in industries they oversee. And its standard for wrongdoing — using “nonpublic information” for private profit — is nearly impossible to enforce.
没有一个议员因为《股票法》而被起诉。我们有理由问，该法案是否从设计上就没有作用。首先，它仍然允许议员交易他们所监管行业的股票。而且它的不当行为标准——利用“非公开信息”牟取私利——几乎不可能执行。
This is unacceptable. A bipartisan bill in the House, called the TRUST in Congress Act, would be big step forward, requiring legislators and their spouses and dependent children to place their stock holdings into a blind trust that only a third party could access during the lawmaker’s time in office. The executive branch already has a similar standard in place.
这是不可接受的。众议院一项名为《国会信托法案》的两党法案将是向前迈出的一大步，该法案要求议员及其配偶和受抚养的子女将其所持股票放入一个保密信托，在议员任职期间，只有第三方才能操作该信托。行政部门已经制定了类似的标准。
Simply requiring legislators to divest all their holdings of equities would be a stronger defense. Blind trusts don’t solve every conflict-of-interest problem. Too much depends on what “blind” turns out to mean in practice.
简单地要求立法者处理掉他们持有的所有股票将是一个更有力的防御措施。保密信托不能解决所有的利益冲突问题。太多取决于“保密”在实践中到底是什么意思。
Granted, even the strictest measures would leave opportunities for the unscrupulous to exploit. The danger of conflict of interest can be mitigated, but never entirely removed. Nonetheless, passing the TRUST in Congress Act — extending to legislators rules like those that bind executives — is the minimum that’s required. Any lawmaker fit for public office should support it.
诚然，即使是最严格的措施也会给肆无忌惮的人留下可乘之机。利益冲突的危险可以减轻，但永远不会完全消除。尽管如此，通过《国会信任法案》——将约束行政部门的法规延伸至立法部门——是所需的最低限度。任何适合担任公职的议员都应该支持它。