Ethics in Government Act of 1978

By May 15 of each year, congressional members, key staffers and top officials in the executive branch must file forms covering the preceding calendar year that detail their personal finances. By law, they must list their assets and liabilities, their income (excluding their government salaries), asset transactions, gifts they received and more. Although the 2012 STOCK Act now requires all mortgages to be listed, property values need not be listed unless they produce income, meaning primary residences are generally not listed as assets. They must include the source of their spouse's income, but need not report the amount.

Why should Americans care about the personal finances of their federal lawmakers? There are several key reasons:

• Thousands of companies are given billions of dollars worth of government contracts every year, and many will often lobby Congress directly. Some of these businesses may also find themselves the targets of congressional scrutiny for questionable business practices, accidents, even disasters. All the while, lawmakers themselves sometimes have stock holdings or other financial relationships with these corporations and associations, which can create possible conflicts of interest.
• About 1 percent of all Americans are millionaires. In Congress, that number regularly hovers between 40 percent and 50 percent, meaning elected leaders generally need not worry about the economic pressures many Americans face - from securing gainful employment to grappling with keeping a family financially afloat. Using the disclosure data, decide for yourself if your elected officials are adequately representing your financial interests.
• Some member's personal wealth has expanded beyond rates of inflation, beyond what most Americans experienced. Use our data to better understand how these Members's wealth expanded in the years they've been in Congress.

Personal financial disclosure reports tell you a lot, but not everything. For example, lawmakers are only required to disclose their assets in broad ranges, meaning a truly accurate snapshot of a lawmaker's wealth is difficult to ascertain. Contact your member of Congress and let your voice be heard if you don't consider this level of disclosure adequate. But Congress did pass legislation to address concerns that lawmakers might trade on non-public information that was conveyed to them in the course of their work. The STOCK Act was signed into law in April, 2012. Read more about the STOCK Act here.

 

https://www.opensecrets.org/personal-finances/why-this-matters

 

所有跟帖： 

• 这个不是税单，不要搅。 -只看不回贴1208- ♂ (0 bytes) () 10/11/2019 postreply 09:46:00

• 他不是问财产公开吗？税单更简单了，税务局有啊 -tz2000- ♂ (122 bytes) () 10/11/2019 postreply 09:55:51