With the geniuses we have in Congress, no problem should be too tough to solve, whether it’s inflation, health care costs, war or disease.

Ten members ended 2025 with stock market returns far exceeding the S&P, the Dow, the Nasdaq or what legendary stock pickers like Warren Buffet achieve. Rep. Tim Moore (R-N.C.) earned 52% on his stock portfolio; New York’s Tom Suozzi (D) scored a 35% gain. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is closing out her Congressional career with a staggering 33% stock profit for 2025.

Unfortunately it’s not genius on display. It’s sleaze. These lawmakers have information and influence other stock traders don’t have. Lawmakers know when a bill will be voted on or a regulation adopted, and they have the clout to influence the timing. That common-sense observation is now backed up by a study of 20 years’ worth of congressional stock trading data published by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Information about what members are trading is so valuable that there are websites like Quiver Quantitative devoted entirely to reporting daily on lawmakers’ positions and trades.

If you’re sickened by this, it gets worse. “Some members seemed to spend more time managing their portfolios than they did at their day job on Capitol Hill,” said Quiver Quantitative cofounder Christopher Kardatzke.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) took the top spot in 2025 for trading volume — $79.83 million — making 406 trades, according to the watchdog website Common Cause. That’s 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 Congress — both Democrats and Republicans — trades stock. But in the past, there has been no will to discipline the stock traders and stop the shenanigans.

The Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act of 2012 bars members and their families from using nonpublic information to make gains. But it’s a laugh. The reporting requirements are frequently ignored by members who, when caught, face a wrist-slap penalty of $200.

Suozzi, who has amassed a fortune during his terms in Congress since 2016, ended this year with a $9.5 million stock portfolio, up $2.5 million for the year. He has often 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, a crime that’s tricky to prove.

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

The public shouldn’t have to worry that their representative is voting based on what’s good for a stock portfolio instead of what’s good for the nation.

Betsy McCaughey is a former Lt. Governor of New York State and Chairman & Founder of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths at www.hospitalinfection.org.