WASH­ING­TON-Aware that most Amer­i­cans would like to dump them all, mem­bers of Con­gress hope to re­gain some sense of trust by sub­ject­ing them­selves to tougher penal­ties for in­sid­er trad­ing and re­quir­ing that they dis­close stock trans­ac­tions with­in 30 days. A pro­ce­dur­al vote Mon­day would al­low the Sen­ate lat­er this week to pass a bill pro­hibit­ing mem­bers of Con­gress from us­ing non­pub­lic in­for­ma­tion for their own per­son­al ben­e­fit or "tip­ping" oth­ers to in­side in­for­ma­tion that they could trade on. In­sid­er trad­ing laws ap­ply to all Amer­i­cans, but the CBS TV news mag­a­zine "60 Min­utes" in No­vem­ber said mem­bers of Con­gress get a pass, cit­ing in­vest­ment trans­ac­tions by par­ty lead­ers and a com­mit­tee chair­man in busi­ness­es about to be af­fect­ed by pend­ing leg­is­la­tion.

The broad­cast re­port raised ques­tions about trades of House Speak­er John Boehn­er; the hus­band of De­mo­c­ra­t­ic leader and for­mer Speak­er Nan­cy Pelosi; and Rep. Spencer Bachus, chair­man of the House Fi­nan­cial Ser­vices Com­mit­tee. All three de­nied us­ing any in­sid­er in­for­ma­tion to make stock trades, but the broad­cast set off a flur­ry of ef­forts in Wash­ing­ton to deal with the pub­lic per­cep­tion. A re­cent Wall Street Jour­nal/NBC News poll of reg­is­tered vot­ers found 56 per cent of them fa­vor re­plac­ing the en­tire 535-mem­ber Con­gress. Oth­er polls this year have giv­en Con­gress an ap­proval rat­ing be­tween 11 per cent and 13 per cent, while dis­ap­proval per­cent­ages have ranged from 79 per cent to 86 per cent.

House Ma­jor­i­ty Leader Er­ic Can­tor said he's work­ing on an ex­pand­ed bill that would go be­yond stock trans­ac­tions and ban law­mak­ers from mak­ing land deals and oth­er in­vest­ments based on what they learned as mem­bers of Con­gress. The Sen­ate ver­sion of the Stop Trad­ing on Con­gres­sion­al Knowl­edge (STOCK) Act would sub­ject any mem­ber of Con­gress who vi­o­lates the ban on in­sid­er trad­ing to in­ves­ti­ga­tion and pros­e­cu­tion by reg­u­la­to­ry agen­cies and the Jus­tice. De­part­ment. It al­so di­rects the House and Sen­ate ethics com­mit­tees to write rules that would make vi­o­la­tors sub­ject to ad­di­tion­al con­gres­sion­al penal­ties.

"We can start restor­ing some of the faith that's been lost in our gov­ern­ment by tak­ing this com­mon sense step of mak­ing mem­bers of Con­gress play by the ex­act same rules as every­one else," said De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Sen. Kirsten Gilli­brand, who with Re­pub­li­can Sen. Scott Brown, wrote the bill "We must make it un­am­bigu­ous that this kind of be­hav­ior is il­le­gal." Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma en­dorsed the bill in his State of the Union speech last week, say­ing he would "sign it to­mor­row." Brown used that open­ing to briefly speak with the pres­i­dent as he was ex­it­ing the House cham­ber af­ter Tues­day's ad­dress.

AP