It’s good to be da king! No wonder they’re all millionaires and are more concerned about tax cuts for the richest Americans rather than helping the middle class. Why should Congress benefit from secret information? Changing the law has to happen to level the playing field.

The SEC generally does not view trading on the basis of advance knowledge of Congressional action to be insider trading. Both House and Senate ethics manuals say that members of Congress are not supposed to make any personal profit from confidential knowledge, although no member of Congress has ever been publicly sanctioned for such trading.

Critics of the loose rules say they can’t prove that members of Congress or their staffs are actually trading and profiting from their positions, but they still believe that’s the only explanation for the returns members of Congress generate over time.

“It just boggles the imagination to think that members of Congress are so much smarter than we are and other traders that they just for some reason enjoy a much higher rate of return on their stock investments than the rest of us,” said Holman. “I just don’t believe that.”