Tester Says Full Transparency Is Necessary To Earn Trust News

Senator Jon Tester is calling on Congress to embrace major steps toward full transparency, saying the government must be “totally clean” to earn the public’s trust.
Tester spoke this week at a Senate hearing examining his bipartisan Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act,( STOCK Act) which prevents members of Congress and employees from using knowledge gained from their work and service for their personal financial benefit. Tester says transparency helps guarantee that those in public office don’t abuse their public trust.
“It is critically important that we operate in a way that is totally clean,” Tester said. “If there’s any way we can do that, we should make those policies mandatory. As far as the forms we fill out, they ought to all be online, our schedules ought to be online. We should be letting people know everything that they should reasonably know in a way that they can access it.”
Tester’s STOCK Act will also require members of Congress to submit quarterly finance reports and requires certain “consultants” who contact congressional offices for information that may affect the stocks of their clients to register as lobbyists.