When the new Congress convenes on Tuesday, Ohio Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur will become the longest-serving woman in its history. Yet after 40 years, she sometimes feels like an outsider.
Not because she’s a woman or now in the minority party in the House. It’s that she’s from Middle America, and represents a district populated by working-class folks — a place and people many colleagues have forgotten, Kaptur said in an interview with The Associated Press.
“This is a burden I’ve carried my entire career. It’s a problem in both parties because the leadership tends to come from the coasts and we here in the big middle of the country are not well understood,” she said.
Republicans and Democrats are being forced to confront critical questions about the people and policies they want to represent them as the next election season roars into view.
For Democrats, much depends upon Joe Biden and whether the president will follow through on his plan to seek reelection. Republicans face contentious leadership battles inside their new House majority and at the Republican National Committee.
But former President Donald Trump will be central in virtually every conversation as the GOP enters what will likely be a nasty and crowded presidential primary that begins in earnest this spring.
The threat of political violence still hangs over American politics and next year’s elections.
Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, sworn in for a second term Sunday, called the sentencing last week of two men convicted of plotting to kidnap her “just,” while urging both parties to confront threats and violent rhetoric.
“Whether it is someone harassing Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh or Congressman Fred Upton here in Michigan, or me, or our attorney general, or secretary of state, it’s unacceptable,” she told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins in an interview the day she was sworn in. “But I do think it’s important that people on both sides of the aisle, who care more about our democracy than their political agenda, stand up and take it on.”
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All members of Congress in both the House and Senate earn the same annual salary of $174,000, which is not all that exceptional considering that to live comfortably in Washington D.C. you need to earn a baseline salary of around $144,000. And that number is increasing every year.
Some framers of the Constitution assumed most senators would likely come from wealthy families, and as a result, didn’t require a salary at all. For a brief period of time under the Articles of Confederation, states could actually suspend their congressional representative’s pay if they were dissatisfied with their work.
Despite officially earning what some might consider a relatively modest wage (compared to, for example, executives at S&P 500 companies), some members of Congress are estimated to be worth tens of millions of dollars, with several inching closer to nine-figure net worths every year. Some came from wealthy families, while others married into them. Some made their fortunes in private sector careers before entering politics. But what the richest all have in common is vastly diversified portfolios of stock options, government securities, mutual funds, exchange-traded funds, and real property—which is more extensive than just real estate—among other assets.
Suspicions of insider trading, in which a lawmaker’s job makes them privy to information withheld from the general public and therefore able to act in their own best financial interest, led to the 2012 Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act. The STOCK Act requires that all stock and securities transactions be disclosed in full within 45 days of the transaction, as well as the disclosure of any asset either worth more than $1,000 at the close of the calendar year or that generated an income of more than $200 during the course of the year.
Still, ethical dilemmas abound. Information that doesn’t technically qualify as inside information and the laws associated with insider trading can still give lawmakers an unfair advantage in the market. A 2022 New York Times analysis of the Capitol Trades database created by 2iQ Research found that 3,700 trades disclosed by lawmakers of both parties between 2019 and 2021 posed potential conflicts of interest between their professional responsibilities, such as the committees they reside on, and their personal finances. Moreover, several members of Congress, many of whom are on the following list, were recently found to have violated the STOCK Act, according to a November 2022 Insider report.
Using a database compiled by Insider from congressional disclosure reports, Stacker ranked current Democratic politicians in Congress by their total estimated net worth. Estimated values were pulled from documents uploaded by each congressional member’s office for 2020, sometimes handwritten, and reference the low end of the estimated range of value for each asset. For some elected officials on this list, the assets of their spouses and dependents are included in their financial estimates, as such holdings bear relevance to that official’s accumulated wealth relative to their position within the federal government.
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Drew Angerer // Getty Images
Political corruption has been in the news for as long as politics have existed. In the U.S. people are often critical of the vast amounts of wealth that politicians, especially those at the federal level, are able to accrue. In 2005, the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act was first introduced after an academic study was released that showed that the investments of members of Congress significantly outperformed other investment portfolios.
The STOCK Act was finally passed in 2012 and requires Congressional members and their staff to disclose any changes in investments that occur in their portfolios or the portfolios of their spouses or dependents within 45 days of the change occurring. It was intended to increase transparency and help prevent insider trading—though the legislation also provides a set of rules that are not overseen by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Though the original legislation required that disclosures be posted online, that clause was amended in 2013, allowing online disclosures to occur on a more delayed basis—in theory, to prevent identity theft of elected officials. The legislation has been significantly ignored by many Congress members since, with an investigation by Insider revealing that 182 congressional officials were in violation of the STOCK Act as of December 2021. STOCK Act enforcement is notoriously secretive and difficult to manage, as it falls outside the jurisdiction of the SEC.
Using a database compiled by Insider from congressional disclosure reports, Stacker ranked current Republican politicians in Congress by their total estimated net worth. Estimated values were pulled from documents uploaded by each congressional member’s office for 2020, sometimes handwritten, and reference the low end of the estimated range of value for each asset.
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