Shameless traders like Tom Suozzi make a mockery of Congress

Inflation, health-care costs, war, disease — no problem should be too tough for our genius-level Congress to solve. 

After all, dozens of these lawmakers ended 2025 with stock-market returns far exceeding the gains of the S&P, the Dow, the Nasdaq, or legendary stock pickers like Warren Buffet. 

Rep. Tim Moore (R-NC) earned 52% on his stock portfolio, Tom Suozzi (D-NY) of Long Island’s “gold coast” scored a 35% gain, and former Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene closed out her House career with a staggering 33% stock profit for 2025.

But it’s not genius on display. It’s sleaze.

These lawmakers have information and influence other stock traders don’t — and they’re parlaying it into riches. 

Lawmakers know when a bill will be voted on or a regulation adopted, and they have the clout to influence the timing. 

It’s common sense, now backed up by a study examining 20 years’ worth of congressional stock-trading data from the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Lawmakers with the most seniority and highest leadership roles generally outperform rank-and-file members, researchers found.

Moore, a freshman Republican, is an exception — but he’s in the catbird seat, sitting on several key subcommittees of the Committee on Financial Services.

It’s a bipartisan problem: Historically, members in the majority make the highest gains.

The top four stock pickers for 2025 are all Republicans.

Information about members’ trades is so valuable that social-media sites like Quiver Quantitative devote themselves entirely to daily reports on lawmakers’ positions.

It gets worse: “Some members seemed to spend more time managing their portfolios than they did at their day job on Capitol Hill,” says Quiver Quantitative CEO Christopher Kardatzke.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) took the top spot in 2025 for trading volume, making 406 trades worth nearly $80 million, according to the watchdog Common Cause — making more than two trades a day for each day Congress was in session.

Who has time to read legislation or look out for constituents?

About half of all members trade stock, Democrats and Republicans both. 

But even those who abstain have shown little will to discipline the stock traders and stop the shenanigans.

It’s like a gentleman’s agreement to hide the dirty laundry.

A 2012 law, the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act, already bars members from using nonpublic information to make gains.

But the STOCK Act is a laugh. 

Members blithely ignore its reporting requirements because, when caught, they face nothing but a wrist-slap penalty of $200.

That’s a rounding error to someone making millions on trades.

Suozzi, who amassed a fortune during his three previous House terms, ended 2025 with a $9.5 million stock portfolio, up $2.5 million for the year. 

He has brushed off his failures to report per the STOCK Act, claiming “some of the formalities” of the law “are not necessarily something I make a priority of.”  

No member has ever been prosecuted for violating the prohibition on insider trading under the STOCK Act, a crime that’s tricky to prove.

The result is unsavory trading on full display. 

Rep. Rob Bresnahan (R-Pa.) was skewered in the press for selling thousands of dollars’ worth of stock in companies that manage Medicaid enrollees a week before voting for a bill that slashed Medicaid funding — but faces no real repercussions.

It’s time for a total ban on stock trading by members of Congress and their spouses. 

Some 86% of Americans support it, including 88% of Democrats, 87% of Republicans and 81% of independents, according to a 2023 University of Maryland poll

Several bills now pending in the House would do just that. 

The proposed measures would have real teeth, compelling violators to disgorge all profits to the US Treasury and pay fines up to 10% of the value of any prohibited investments.

The push is making for strange bedfellows: In the House, Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-NY) are on the same side of the fight; in the Senate, both Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) are in favor.

“We want to get that done,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said just before Christmas, promising a vote in the new year.

Even Suozzi claims to support the bill, he told The Post.

But he and the other profiteers shouldn’t wait for a legal ban.  

A law isn’t necessary to do the right thing. It just takes honor.  

Half of Congress already eschews stock trading. 

Time for the rest to do the same — of their own volition. 

Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York.