Congressional Millionaires: The richest American politicans
Would it surprise you to know that more than half the members of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives are millionaires? And that the median worth of members is about $1 million?
How Do We Know This? And Why Can We?
In order to be transparent and to avoid conflicts of interest, the 1978 Ethics in Government Act requires many elected officials in federal government to file an annual financial disclosure statement that reveals their assets, investments and other business interests.
Which is how the Motley Fool can report that more than 100 members of Congress have made more than 10,000 stock trades each year since 2021 — and that they tend to beat the market with their dealings. The most popular stocks on Capitol Hill are tech stocks: Microsoft, Apple and Alphabet.
NVIDIA — a Santa Clara, California-based tech company that designs chips and software for use in artificial intelligence — was held and traded by a number of members, for example, including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, even while the CHIPS and Science Act was being hammered out and voted on. Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville traded corn futures while serving on the Agriculture Committee.
Quiver Quantitative uses the annual financial disclosures and then monitors the worth of their stock portfolios to build an online estimate — updated hourly — of the worth of each member of the Senate and the House of Representatives.
The Top 30
Here’s a look at the 30 richest people on Capitol Hill, as ranked this summer by financial data aggregator Quiver Quantitative.
By Far, The Richest Person on Capitol Hill ...
State of Florida
In 1987 Scott co-founded Columbia Hospital Corp., which began buying up for-profit hospitals and other health care providers. It later merged with another firm to form HCA Healthcare, with Scott as CEO.In 1993, federal authorities began looking into accusations that HCA had defrauded Medicare, Medicaid and other companies. HCA would admit to systematically overcharging the government, plead guilty to 14 felony charges and would be charged $1.7 billion by the Department of Justice in what was, at the time, the largest health care fraud settlement in U.S. history.
Scott was pressured to resign after it came out HCA had kept two sets of books — one with actual expenses and one to show the government. At one deposition, Scott pleaded the Fifth Amendment 75 times.
Scott then became a venture capitalist, investing in technology and healthcare companies before founding a group, Conservatives for Patients’ Rights, in 2009.
A year later, Scott ran for governor. He served two terms and then ran for U.S. Senate in 2021, defeating Democratic incumbent Bill Nelson.