Some people enter politics to do good, others to do well. The difference is more than semantic.
The do-gooders care about real issues like public health, education and the environment.
They might look at the stock market to tell how the economy is doing.
The other kind may check their portfolios several times a day to see how their own stocks are doing. They sometimes confuse the national interest with their own self-interest.
That makes it hard for voters to know why their public servants vote as they do to pass laws and spend money. The result is an unhealthy distrust.
If anything unites the American public, it's their common sense about that. A recent study by the University of California San Diego, as reported by The Hill, found 86% support among both Republicans and Democrats for a ban on stock trading by members of Congress, their spouses and dependent children.
It even has bipartisan support in Congress -- another sign it's long overdue.
The one bill moving, in the Senate, is strong but necessary medicine.
It allows members to own no financial instruments except mutual and index funds and treasury bonds. They would have to divest any other "covered investments," such as individual stocks, commodities, cryptocurrencies and corporate bonds.
All that prompted a squawk and a "no" vote from Florida Sen. Rick Scott when the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee approved it, 8-7. The only Republican to vote yes was sponsor Jeff Hawley of Missouri.
"This bill would force people to sell businesses they spent their lives building -- probably at the worst possible time," Scott said. "Anybody here want to be poor? I don't."
Rick Scott, poor? He's the richest member of Congress by far, with an estimated net worth of between $260 million and $549.4 million, much of it in treasuries. (Disclosure requirements are intentionally vague; debts and assets are shown in ranges.)
Most Floridians would be glad to take Scott's place for his $174,000 salary alone.
The problem is not so much that people get rich in Congress, although some do -- former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, for one, mainly through her husband's investments. It's that most are already wealthy when they get there.
More than half of present members are millionaires. The concern is whether they are guarding and growing their assets by their votes.
Only a flat-out ban on trading can put that to rest. Blind trusts are an imperfect alternative because the officeholder knows what's in them at the outset.
As governor, Scott certainly did. His former son-in-law even sat on the board of the trust's largest asset for two years.
Senator Hawley's fellow Republicans lashed out at him for revisions that exempt the president and vice president during their present terms. But a delayed ban is better than no ban at all.
Banning congressional stock trading is a genuine populist issue.
What Scott can't see, or won't admit, is perfectly obvious to another Florida conservative, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of St. Petersburg. She plans to file a discharge petition to force a vote on a stock-trading bill when the House returns from its August recess. The bill Luna supports is HR 1908 by Tennessee Republican Rep. Tim Burchett.
With 218 signatures, the petition would put the bill on the floor without approval of the Speaker or a committee. The bill Luna wants isn't as comprehensive as some others -- it wouldn't apply to the president -- but it's still progress.
It would be Luna's second discharge petition. The first was to allow proxy voting for House parents of newborns, and she had enough signatures. But Speaker Mike Johnson persuaded her to accept a weaker vote-pairing alternative.
Existing law that requires Congress members to report their stock trades provides examples of why members shouldn't trade at all.
In the latest example, the House Ethics Committee admonished Pennsylvania Rep. Mike Kelly for stock his wife bought in a steelmaking company while having inside information of an investigation that could benefit the company.
After buying Tesla stock possibly worth $135,000, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia used her capacity as a subcommittee chair to urge the FBI to investigate "organized attacks" on Tesla and its CEO, Elon Musk.
She also turned a profit on depressed stocks she had bought shortly before Trump announced a favorable pause in his tariff wars.
She may not have been tipped to what Trump would do. But the curious circumstance is another blow to public confidence.
Rep. Jared Moskowitz, a Democrat from Broward, also reported between $20,000 and $300,000 in purchases just before Trump's tariff pause boosted the market. A spokesman said they were selected "by an outside third-party financial advisor." Moskowitz is one of 87 co-sponsors of a bipartisan bill called the TRUST in Congress Act (HR 396) that would require members to either divest or put their stocks in a blind trust.
"Members of Congress should be banned from trading individual stocks because their access to privileged, nonpublic information creates unavoidable conflicts of interest that erode public confidence in government," Luna said. "As lawmakers, we receive classified briefings, shape economic policies, and interact with industry leaders, giving us insights that can influence stock prices. Even if no laws are broken, the appearance of profiting from this access fuels distrust among Americans. The American people do not trust the U.S. government, and this is a step toward building that trust."
We will report which other members of Florida's House delegation sign or don't sign her discharge petition. Meanwhile, Senate leadership should let the chamber vote on Hawley's bill. Better yet, they should support it.