Schumer Remarks Calling for a Congressional Ethics Investigation into Rep. Price’s Stock Trades
Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer today called the House Office of Congressional Ethics to investigate Rep. Tom Price’s stock trades. Below are his remarks:
I’m proud to be here with my friends and colleagues. Senator Murray, ranking member of the Help committee and Senator Wyden, ranking member of the Finance Committee. Now just this week, House Republicans met behind closed doors. When they came out, they shocked the world by announcing that the first order of business in the people’s House wasn’t going to help millions of Americans get healthcare. Republicans weren’t going to pass legislation to raise middle class incomes or find Americans jobs. No. The House Republicans’ first order of business in the 115th Congress was to try and gut the independent Ethics committee, just as hearings for President- elect Trump’s cabinet nominations were beginning. Hearings for nominees like Representative Tom Price to be Secretary of Health and Human Services.
Now as you know, Republicans backed off their crusade against ethics – for now. But it begged the question: who were they trying to protect? Well, as the Wall Street Journal published just before the holidays, Representative Price has reportedly traded more than $300,000 in shares of roughly 40 healthcare and pharmaceutical companies while simultaneously pushing and advocating for legislation on the federal level that could potentially impact these companies’ stock prices. Let me repeat that: President-elect Trump’s pick for HHS traded hundreds of thousands of dollars in health-related stocks while, as senior member of congress, he advocated and voted for federal legislation that could impact those very companies’ stock prices.
Let me also remind you that Congressman Price's influence and access to information on these healthcare issues was? second to none. He chaired the ?Budget Committee, sat on the House Ways and Means Committee and was a member of the Republican Congressional Health Care Caucus. And Congressman Price didn’t simply vote on health care bills when they came to the House floor. He championed them. According to the Wall Street Journal, just last Congress, Congressman Price sponsored 9 and cosponsored 35 health-related bills in the House.
Right before the Congress ended, we passed a massive new health care bill called the CURES Act. In a new letter released today by Public watchdog, Public Citizen, the group raises serious questions about whether this bill, which speeds up drug approvals by the FDA, could benefit the stocks owned by Congressman Price. Since the bill passed last month, one of those stocks has doubled in value. And Congressman Price didn’t make one or two small trades in a health care and pharmaceutical stocks. No. In fact, last year he made over 70 trades in just one day! And purchased thousands of dollars of stock in a single health care company.
Bottom line: Congressman Price had the influence and was actively involved in pushing health care policies while simultaneously making dozens of trades in companies that would be impacted by those policies. He did this repeatedly and in such large numbers he is likely to have made tens of thousands of dollars just on one of these trades alone. Every American should be shocked and appalled by this.
So today, we are here to call on the House Office of Congressional Ethics to investigate whether any laws were broken. We don’t know if he broke the law. But there certainly is enough serious questions to warrant a serious investigation before any hearing is held on Congressman Price to become Secretary of HHS. You may remember the Congress passed and signed into law a few years ago the Stock Act which prohibited insider trading by members of Congress. So it’s worth noting that we can ask for this investigation as an outside the house entity – but if House Republicans had had their way Monday, we wouldn’t be allowed to do this. As my colleagues will outline, we also have a series of questions that we will demand that Congressman Price or the OCE must answer before any hearings on the Price nomination can begin all related to this issue. This is serious stuff. And that’s why we need full investigations, with plenty of questions and full disclosure. We do not believe any of these hearings should be rushed through.