Senate Democrats demand investigation into Trump nominee Tom Price
Senate Democrats have called for an ethics investigation into whether Congressman Tom Price (R-GA), who was tapped by President-elect Donald Trump to lead the Department Health and Human Services, may have traded healthcare stocks based on information he would have been privy to as he worked on related legislation.
“Congressman Price had the influence and was actively involved in pushing healthcare policies while simultaneously making dozens of trades in companies that would be impacted by those policies. He did this repeatedly and such large numbers he’s likely to have made tens of thousands of dollars in one of these trades alone,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) alleged.
Schumer who was joined by Senators Patty Murray (D-WA), the ranking Democrat on the Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee, and Ron Wyden (D-OR) the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee quoted a December Wall Street Journal story which alleged that Price had traded “more than $300,000 in shares of health-related companies over the past four years”
“We don’t know if he broke the law,” Schumer admitted. But he still called for a delay in Price’s confirmation hearing, stating there is, “certainly enough serious questions to warrant a serious investigation before any hearing is held on Congressman Price to become secretary of HHS.”
The law in question that Democrats invoked was the STOCK Act, which was passed in 2012 and bars members of Congress from trading stocks based on inside information. The issue was brought to light in November 2011 after a “60 Minutes” report led to a renewed push to prohibit the practice.