T 
 

he news of how a group 
of people on Reddit used 
shares of GameStop to 

outmatch a Wall Street hedge fund 
has not only captured national 
attention but has also started an 
ethics conversation about hedge 
funds and the stock market. 
However, private citizens are not 
the only ones using questionable 
strategies to make money in 
stocks. Over the past few years, 
this issue has gained widespread 
attention due to a number of 
lawmakers who have engaged 
in ethically dubious trades. 
This has raised significant 
concerns 
among 
watchdog 

groups and the general public 
and has led to calls for greater 
regulation of stock trading 
among members of Congress.

For many years, there was no 

law explicitly preventing members 
of Congress from trading on 
congressional knowledge. Members 
of Congress could use privileged, and 
therefore asymmetric, information 
that they received to influence 
their stock trades. Finally, in 2012, 
Congress passed the Stop Trading 
on 
Congressional 
Knowledge 

Act, which prohibits members of 
Congress from using information 
that is not available to the public to 
influence their stock market trading. 

While 
this 
act 
was 
an 

important first step in addressing 
this issue, it did not go far enough, 
as demonstrated by the actions 
of many lawmakers recently. 
In February 2020, Congress 
received a briefing that outlined 
the severe threat of COVID-19 
on the country and the economy. 
Following this briefing, multiple 
elected 
officials, 
including 

former Sen. Kelly Loeffler, R-Ga., 
made a series of controversial 
stock trades. Loeffler sold large 

stock holdings only days before 
the market had a large downturn 
due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 
She also went a step further 
by investing in teleworking 
software, a field that became 
much more profitable during 
the pandemic. 

Not only did Loeffler make 

these 
controversial 
stock 

purchases but so did members of 
her family, including her husband, 
who is the president of the New 
York Stock Exchange. He bought 
many stocks in industries that 
would 
soon 
boom 
following 

the passage of the then-secret 
Coronavirus 
Aid, 
Relief 
and 

Economic Security Act. 

Former Sen. David Perdue, 

R-Ga., also has an eyebrow-
raising stock profile. In his six 
years in the Senate, Perdue 
made 2,596 stock trades. Many 
of these trades were of stocks of 
companies that fell under the 
purview of the committees that 
he sat on, such as the Senate 
Banking 
Committee. 
Having 

a 
senator 
holding 
stock 
in 

companies that they oversee as a 
member of a related committee is 
a major concern. 

The stock purchases by Perdue 

and Loeffler were flagged and 
investigated by the Department 
of Justice and the Securities and 
Exchange Committee. However, 
the 
cases 
were 
eventually 

dismissed, which is par for the 
course. Since the passage of 
the STOCK Act, no members of 
Congress have been prosecuted 
for using insider information on 
stock purchases.

While the passage of the 

STOCK Act was an important 
first step, the law is far too 
lenient to be effective. If we want 
to address the issue of members 

of Congress using their position 
and private information to enrich 
themselves through the stock 
market, there needs to be a more 
rigorous 
and 
comprehensive 

law put into place. There is 
a bipartisan bill called the 
Transparent 
Representation 

Upholding Service and Trust 
Act that would do just this. This 
bill would require members of 
Congress and their families to 
put their stocks in a blind trust, 
where a person has no control or 
knowledge of the assets or how 
they’re being managed.

Having members of Congress 

put their stocks in blind trusts 
would help to eliminate the issue 
of insider trading by our elected 
officials and promote greater 
trust in our legislative branch. 
There is much that we can do to 
help address this issue. You can 
advocate for stricter regulations 
with your elected officials. You 
can also hold your representatives 
accountable at the ballot box. 

This year in the Georgia Senate 

special election, Sens. Perdue 
and Loeffler were both assailed 
over their stock purchases by 
their Democratic counterparts. 
The election of Sens. Raphael 
Warnock, D-Ga., and Jon Ossoff, 
D-Ga, shows how voters have 
the power to hold members of 
Congress accountable for their 
misuse of private information in 
the stock market. 

Our government should work 

for us. We must all do what we 
can to hold our representatives 
accountable and ensure that 
our representatives serve us 
and not their own financial 
interests.

L

ate 
last 
year, 
news 

broke of the COVID-19 
B.1.1.7 variant reaching 

the United States, specifically 
Colorado. 
Much 
like 
last 

March, when the news was 
reported that the coronavirus 
had arrived in the U.S., panic 
and uncertainty quickly spread 
throughout the country. Now, 
nearly a month after the initial 
detection of the novel variant, 
over 600 domestic cases of 
B.1.1.7 have been reported by 
the Centers for Disease Control 
and Prevention; 13 cases are 
here in Washtenaw County. 

The 
county 
health 

department’s response to this: all 
University of Michigan students 
currently residing in Ann Arbor 
should “stay in place,” including 
not traveling within or out of 
the county, for two weeks. The 
Biden administration has also 
taken action, deploying country-
wide travel restrictions on those 
coming from countries that are 
heavily populated with new and 
potentially dangerous variants, 
including Brazil, Ireland, the 
United Kingdom and South 
Africa. However, there is a 
problematic exception to that 
ban: American citizens are still 
welcome back, even if they have 
traveled to those destinations. 

Although 
likely 
well-

intentioned, 
these 
travel 

restrictions are heavily flawed 
in their design. 

As 
we 
have 
seen 
an 

unfortunate number of times 
— over 26 million, to be exact 
— over the last few months, 
the virus does not care one bit 
about 
citizenship. 
Traveling 

to a location where the virus, 
especially a highly contagious 
variant of it, is rampant (or 
even just present) is a near-
perfect recipe for contracting 
it. Thus, excluding those that 
have traveled to these countries 
from travel restrictions simply 
because their legal documents 
read “U.S. citizen” is illogical. 
These Americans can and likely 
will contract the disease, too. 

Although 
not 
a 
perfect 

analogy, 
when 
Washtenaw 

County announced its stay-
at-home recommendation last 
week, they did not say Ann 
Arbor citizens could be excused, 
as doing so would be ineffective. 
The same should be expected 
from U.S. citizens on both a 
larger and more exhaustive 

scale. A strict quarantine, not 
simply an advisory to do so, 
should be mandatory for these 
individuals should they wish to 
return. 

The U.S. has been struggling 

with this concept since well 
before 
President 
Joe 
Biden 

took 
office. 
Look 
back 
to 

Thanksgiving 
or 
Christmas, 

only a few months ago, for 
example. 
Despite 
repeated 

advisories from the CDC to avoid 
travel, strict restrictions were 
not enacted and consequently, 
Americans traveled during the 
holidays in mass numbers. In 
the days and weeks following 
Thanksgiving this year, daily 
hospitalizations reached over 
100,000 and daily deaths were at 
about 3,000. Experts, including 
Dr. Anthony Fauci, note that 
this was likely a direct result 
of the influx of travel around 
the holiday. 

What is potentially even more 

troubling about this data is that 
most of the holiday travel was 
domestic. International travel 
thus proposes a whole new 
concern, if those other countries 
are 
experiencing 
problems 

with increased cases due to 
the novel variant. Travel for 
anyone during a pandemic will 
inevitably lead to a distribution 
of cases, including if it is 
international. 

 
This 
evaluation 
is 
not 

to say that Biden and his 
administration are not on the 

right track, but rather that 
they need to go full force 
with the ban, or at the very 
least with the conditions they 
impose on returning. 

Canadian 
Prime 
Minister 

Justin 
Trudeau 
seems 
to 

understand the need for harsh 
limitations, announcing earlier 
this week a much stricter set 
of restrictions. Upon arrival, 
travelers to our neighbor to the 
north must begin quarantine 
in a hotel, in addition to 
adhering 
to 
protocols 
for 

in-airport 
and 
pre-boarding 

PCR testing. Additionally, the 
destinations within the country 
for international travel have 
been restricted to four cities, in 
attempts to limit the points of 
entry for those with the virus. 
The U.S. should do the same, 
plain and simple.

Australia is even stricter. 

Among other policies, most 
notably, all arrivals to the 
country 
have 
a 
mandatory 

two-week 
hotel 
quarantine. 

After recording their first case 
in months this Sunday, the 
country promptly put the city 
of Perth under a comprehensive 
lockdown. 
Of 
course 
one 

must account for population 
differences but, for perspective, 
the U.S. is averaging at least 
100,000 cases daily. 

Imposing 
similarly 
strict 

travel restrictions, especially in 
the wake of a concerning new 
virus variant, could dwindle that 
figure significantly. It seems 
that for all countries that enact 
stricter policies like these, cases 
seem to be consistently down — I 
doubt this is coincidental. 

Enacting more comprehensive 

policies is going to anger a lot 
of people. The pandemic has 
been tiring, fatal and strenuous 
and the last thing many want, 
especially those who have yet to 
grapple with or see the severity 
of the virus themselves, is more 
or stricter restrictions. 

Unfortunately, though, until 

vaccines are fully distributed, 
restrictions are needed. Biden 
and his team cannot skimp 
out on how they impose them. 
Otherwise, we could soon be 
seeing yet another resurgence, 
this time with variants that 
could be doing more damage 
than the first one. 

11 — Wednesday, February 10, 2021
Opinion
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

“This evaluation 
is not to say that 

Biden and his 

administration are 

not on the right 
track, but rather 
that they need to 
go full force with 
the ban, or at the 
very least with 
the conditions 
they impose on 

returning. ”

BRITTANY BOWMAN

Managing Editor

Stanford Lipsey Student Publications Building

420 Maynard St. 

Ann Arbor, MI 48109

 tothedaily@michigandaily.com

Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890.

CLAIRE HAO

Editor in Chief

ELIZABETH COOK 
AND JOEL WEINER

Editorial Page Editors

Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of The Daily’s Editorial Board. 

All other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of their authors.

Zack Blumberg

Brittany Bowman
Emily Considine
Elizabeth Cook
Jess D’Agostino

Andrew Gerace

Jack Grieve
Krystal Hur
Min Soo Kim
Zoe Phillips

Mary Rolfes

Gabrijela Skoko

Elayna Swift
Joel Weiner
Erin White

EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS

John Tumpowsky can be reached at 

jgtump@umich.edu.

Isabelle Schindler can be reached at 

ischind@umich.edu.

JOHN TUMPOWSKY | COLUMNIST

ISABELLE SCHINDLER | COLUMNIST

Travel restrictions only work if 

they are thorough, Joe

Keep Congress out of the stock market

From The Daily: America needs 
ambitious policy. The Democrats 

have to deliver.

As such, the Democrats need to 

be strategic with their legislative 
focus and get to work immediately. 
Wasting time on minute aspects 
of bills that the general public 
does not understand, as the 
Obama administration did with 
its economic relief measure, will 
cost them their positions. Biden 
must spearhead policy that is 
effective and has clear, tangible 
results for Democrats to have any 
hope of successfully maintaining a 
majority through the midterms.

Before beginning a conversation 

on the policies that will be crucial 
for 
the 
Biden 
administration 

to push, it is important to note 
the likely disastrous role of the 
filibuster 
in 
preventing 
the 

Senate Democrats from passing 
legislation. 

Recently, Biden has refrained 

from taking a strong stance on the 
filibuster — the popular Senate 
stalling strategy — and suspicions 
are arising among some Democrats 
that 
he 
may 
be 
a 
stronger 

supporter of the filibuster than 
they wish. In an ideal America, 
where bipartisanship flourishes 
flawlessly 
and 
democracy 
is 

perfectly embodied, Biden’s desire 
to negotiate and work with the 
Republicans without the removal 
of the filibuster might be a reality. 

But neither of the above exists in 

2021. If Biden fails to acknowledge 
that truth, then he can wave 
goodbye to any legislative plans for 
the coming months. His pursuit of 
political compromise is noble and 
admirable, but it is naive to think 
Republicans will agree to most 
aspects of a Democratic agenda. 

Simply 
put, 
Biden 
needs 

to end the filibuster for any 
progress to be made. 

Senate Minority Leader Mitch 

McConnell, R-Ky., recognizes the 
power of the filibuster and the 
harm that outlawing it could have 
on his party’s role in politics in 
the coming years, noting just 
before 
Biden’s 
inauguration 

that he planned to present an 
ultimatum to Majority Senate 
Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., 
and the Democrats. 

His warning: Keep the filibuster, 

or expect a lack of cooperation. 
Since then, following reassurance 
from a few Democratic senators 
that they would not endorse 
removing the filibuster, McConnell 
has calmed his stance.

Reformed health care, climate 

initiatives, economic restoration 
and much more are all crucial 
to the Biden agenda and are 
desperately needed by Americans 
living in a post-Trump United 
States. The filibuster can easily 
block all of them. 

At the moment, Biden’s plan 

of attack seems to be through 
executive orders, as both Donald 
Trump and Barack Obama did 
before him. But if the Republicans 
re-secure the presidency, any 
executive orders can be reversed. 
It happened with Trump, who 
quickly moved to dismantle many 
of Obama’s orders, and is now 
happening with Biden, who plans 
to do the same to Trump’s. For this 
reason, Biden and the Democrats 
cannot shy away from pushing 

their agenda in Congress by 
passing 
laws, 
arguably 
the 

most legitimate form of the 
legislative process. 

It is inevitable that Biden will 

face the destructive power of the 
filibuster in his policy plans. It is 
simply a matter of if he is willing to 
dismantle it or not. 

Apart from the set of usual 

responsibilities 
faced 
by 
U.S. 

presidents, 
the 
Biden-Harris 

administration has inherited a 
number of challenges this term 
unseen by prior administrations. 
In tackling them, we hope they 
enact policies that fully address the 
urgency of the pandemic while also 
working toward solving long-term 
issues like protecting Americans 
from further economic turmoil. 
In addition to mitigating the 
spread of COVID-19, Biden and 
Harris should also seek economic 
stability for all. 

With 
15,536 
lives 
lost 
in 

Michigan and more than 400,000 
dead in the U.S., coupled with a 
stunted economy and persistently 
high unemployment, the weight of 
each signature during these first 
100 days remains heavy. A poorly 
balanced response could lead to an 
additional 200,000 deaths in the 
U.S. alone. 

The 
Biden-Harris 
plan 
to 

beat COVID-19 is bold. But is 
it enough? With a seven-point 
strategy that values science, seeks 
the 
re-harnessing 
of 
national 

cooperation 
and 
emphasizes 

accessibility and inclusivity, our 
nation’s future is more hopeful 
than it was before this transition of 
power. With specific goals, such as 
vaccinating 100 million in the first 
100 days, bringing down COVID-
related costs and barriers and 
working to rebuild transparency 
and public trust in scientific 
institutions, the Biden-Harris plan 
has the potential to set America 
on the right track. Experts warn, 
however, that the plan may be 
lacking when it comes to funding, 
staffing and procedures regarding 
the new COVID-19 variant, SARS-
CoV-2 B.1.1.7.

While 
the 
Biden-Harris 

administration 
is 
primarily 

responsible for enacting their 
seven-point strategy to address 
COVID-19, we must be equally 
committed to doing the work 
as a community. In Ann Arbor 
and Washtenaw County, if we 
want to save lives in our own 
neighborhoods, we must remain 
committed to recommendations 
made by public health experts, like 
wearing well-fitted masks outside 
of our households and following 
all guidelines from the Centers for 
Disease Control and Prevention.

This pandemic will not go away 

on its own. Following mandates, 
enforcing travel restrictions and 
implementing 
common-sense 

economic 
measures 
will 
be 

equally important up until day 
101 and thereafter. Without 
follow-through 
from 
every 

community in the U.S. and a 
sense of personal responsibility, 
the advances made by Biden’s 
administration will falter.

Though we only sit at the tip 

of the iceberg that will inevitably 

consume 2021, November 2022 
and the midterm elections are just 
around the corner. The best way 
for Democrats to retain control of 
Congress in the 2022 midterms 
will be to govern like McConnell. 
That is: viciously, obstinately and 
without tolerance for dissent 
on important issues like the 
minimum wage or the filibuster 
— we are looking at you, Sen. Joe 
Manchin, D-W.Va. 

From 
a 
purely 
electoral 

angle, one critique of the Obama 
administration is that former 
President Obama governed in the 
long term. Yes, the Affordable 
Care Act proved to be a relatively 
popular piece of legislation in 
the long run, but in the short 
term, this nearly 2,500-page law 
did little to improve the electoral 
odds for Democrats during the 
2010 midterms. 

Democrats’ 
failure 
to 
pass 

visible policies that benefited their 
core supporters arguably led to 
Republicans taking the House in 
2010. Obama had much to show 
for his work, but most of it was too 
indirect to compel voters.

In contrast to the Obama 

administration, 
the 
Biden 

administration should focus first on 
the short term. Biden should push 
through those ambitious policies 
which will garner immediate 
approval from the public. An 
immediate, rapid-fire approach 
is the only type of administration 
that Biden can afford to have, 
because maintaining a governing 
coalition after 2022 is by no means 
guaranteed. Some examples of 
ambitious measures that have 
broad public support include a 
$15 minimum wage, marijuana 
legalization at the federal level and 
expanding government-sponsored 
health care plans. 

Outside of policy, as Democrats 

move into 2021, they may want 
to fortify their messaging — 
Republicans certainly will. Take 
U.S. Rep. Madison Cawthorn, 
R-N.C., who recently said, “I have 
built my staff around comms rather 
than legislation.” 

Whether Democrats are more 

or moderate or progressive, it is 
clear that their messaging has 
been faulty. Even if Biden delivers 
on many of his more ambitious 
campaign promises, it will be 
useless in the coming elections if 
Democrats can’t communicate in 
new and effective ways. 

For 
example, 
Secretary 
of 

Transportation 
Pete 
Buttigieg 

has 
made 
several 
successful 

appearances on Fox News, a 
notably conservative network. 
This could signal a welcome 
change 
in 
how 
Democrats 

conduct their messaging for the 
coming election cycle.

Democrats are not faced with 

the decision of either keeping 
control of Congress or passing 
ambitious policies. Those goals 
are one and the same. If Joe Biden 
wants to be a successful president, 
the only path that he can follow 
is one of aggressive action, be 
it on the COVID-19 pandemic, 
the dysfunction in our economy 
or in wrangling a grid-locked 
government.

THE MICHIGAN DAILY EDITORIAL BOARD

W

ith the election of President Joe Biden and Sens. Raphael 
Warnock, D-Ga., and Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., Democrats now 
have control of the presidency, the House and the Senate for 

the first time in 10 years. But their majority is slim, and their control of 
Congress will likely end in two years, following the 2022 midterm elections. 

