Should key state and federal officials be required to divest themselves of their private holdings before taking office?

No

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by Codak Simpson

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In an age when the predominant sentiment is that "change is coming," or that "we can change" referring to the way that the current broken political system operates, it is important to consider the factors involved in what this means to the key state and federal officials, regardless of which side of the fence you sit politically.

Although I believe that these people should not be required to divest themselves of their private holdings before taking office, I do believe that it should not be something that influences decisions while they are in office. By taking this out of the equation, it is possible to make the system less corrupt and prevent agendas from being advanced at the expense of the people on Main Street. The only way that I see for this to happen is to limit the influence that this has in the decision-making process in the following two ways.

Create Motivation

Private holding accounts are just that, private. By forcing politicians to divest themselves, it could limit the motivation for them to do a good job while in office. By allowing them to keep their assets, their good or bad decisions affect them as much as they do the average citizen, and when they leave office, they are able to reap the rewards or realize the same losses as their constituents effectively making them "one" with the people rather than "separate" and "above" the people they influence.

Put the Focus in the Right Place

To avoid corruption while in office, I believe that accounts should be frozen from either being manipulated (stocks bought, sold, or traded) or from earning money. Protecting them from losing money would be a mistake, however, because they could wreak havoc and leave office without being affected by poor choices. By doing this, only long term profits or gains will affect their portfolio income and it will help the people going into office to realize that they should not be able to make money based on their decisions This would be similar to bans imposed on insider trading. By allowing them to keep their portfolios for the long term, it will allow them to maintain a financial base without having to start over from scratch after they leave office and once out of office, their portfolios would return to normal.

I may be in the minority here, but I believe that most politicians go into office with the right intentions. Along the way, their ethics and moral standards get corrupted by having to fight an established system that is so resistant to change. If politicians were willing to abide by these rules going into office, it would help to convince some skeptics and believers that they are doing things for the right reasons, and not to further their own personal agendas. After all, isn't that the point of being in office?

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