The truth will make you sick.
Congress is rich. Unbelievably rich. According to data from the Center for Responsive Politics, 249 of the 535 members of Congress are millionaires. That's 47%. By comparison, about 5% of American households are worth more than $1 million.
And until just recently, insider trading laws didn't apply to Congress. They could buy or sell investments based on non-public information they learned from their privileged positions.
As you would expect, that's led to some great returns for Congress' investments. In a study cited by Barron's, members of the House of Representatives beat investors like you and me by 55 basis points a month. That comes out to an extra 6.8% per year.
I don't know which is worse: The fact that insider trading was legal for some of our nation's wealthiest politicians... or that Congress refused to do anything about it for decades.
I even wrote about this problem back in July 2011, after doing research into how -- and in what stocks -- Congress invests.
Then, in late 2011, 60 Minutes -- one of the most-respected investigative journalism programs on television -- dedicated a segment to the issue. Here's a portion of what they had to say...
And that was just one example of what was happening on both sides of the aisle.
