Holy shit, he actually said this, lol. He couldn’t come up with some “patriotic,” free-market something-something line of “principled” bullshit rather than just outright saying members should be allowed to make money (and insider trade) on the side because Congress’s pay rate isn’t enough?

Christ. At least he didn’t say he wasn’t necessarily opposed but was concerned that a ban on trading a slippery slope into other, more rigorous constraints on members and their family members too, which was probably what he’s thinking. Way to Pelosify your speakership, Mike.

But to his point about pay: National Zero’s official editorial position remains that members of Congress should in fact be paid substantially more, that even a tenfold increase of the current $174,000/year would be reasonable so long as it’s paired with the most draconian, colonoscopy-level scrutiny of their finances on par with that of CIA officers or sequestered jurors, bans on holding a stake in so much as a fucking tractor dealership in rural Indiana, prohibiting having extramarital affairs or any other sorts of potentially compromising personal conduct susceptible to blackmail, and that pay be subject to docking if they fail to collectively meet certain productivity benchmarks like letting the government shut down or failing to take up a bill that passed the other chamber.

Wonder what Johnson’s excuse for opposing that sort of radical overhaul of Congress would be.

CORRECTION 5/14/2025 1:13 PM EDT: Johnson actually is in favor of the ban but did not commit to bringing any bills banning it to a vote. This clip was late and taken out of context. Headline updated to reflect this though the text of the article remains otherwise intact for posterity.