that committee who are mentioned in my book involving the stock trades and on the house side spencer baucus as i lay out in the book has done massive amounts of options trading when he was on the transportation committee shorting united airlines stock he has oversight. he is the chairman of the committee it is doubtful he would want me to show up. to my mind so much in this town is partisan. there is bipartisan encircling this is something they can agree on that this really is illegal but then we say with the sec have they ever gone after a member of congress for this insider-trading? no. the sec budget is set by congress and look what happened when the fbi got a federal judge to get this church warrant to search william jefferson end of this. the fbi had on all wiretap he was taking bribes and when they showed up for a search warrant both sides of the aisle were outraged to say this is a breach of congressional authority and threats to cut the fbi budget. honestly will the sec do something about this? come on. >> since i have been up since four in this man have not been this excited. [laug

he reports that gop congressmen like spencer baucus of alabama and fellow members of the house financial services committee why were getting dire top secret briefings on the crisis from the treasury secretary hank paulson. at the same time, according to "60 minutes," congressman bachus started making stock bets that the market would go down. his office says he never trades on nonpublic information, but the timing is certainly suspicious. bachus, his reported take on trades was around $50,000. it is a bipartisan story. they're doing it on both sides. take democrat nancy pelosi, the former house speaker. in 2008 she took part in visa, the credit card company's invitation-only initial stock offering, buying 5,000 shares just as the legislation that would have hurt credit card companies like visa began to trip through the house. legislation that failed that time. it was ultimately passed through the senate. steve croft asked her about that. >> i wanted to ask you why you and your husband, back in march of 2008, accepted and participated in a very large ipo deal from visa at a time there was

in particular, the hearings on the house side on tuesday, the chairman of that committee, spencer baucusking a felon to sit on a jury to decide whether somebody else is guilty of a crime, or whether it is a crime at all. >> alisyn: or the fox guarding the hen house, and, so, why -- here's something simple. instead of lots of hearings, why doesn't congress just have to apply the same laws and rules that affect the rest of us? >> that is a very simple solution. and that is what the stock act in effect would do, say that it is indeed a felony to use insider information as a congressman or a staff member to trade stock and part of the problem is, i'm concerned the securities and exchange commission really wouldn't enforce this. i mean, in the past when the fbi has investigated criminal actions, by members of congress, congress is has threatened to cut the fbi budget, so, i'm concerned that the law in this case is not going to be enough. i think we needed to have, you know, near instant disclosure of their trades and if they are having a big debate on health care we know whether they are trad

politico, they say baucus was putting them on the line to repair the damage to his reputation from that "60 minutes" report. one of them telling politico, quote, we're not going to cover spencer's ass by passing a half-baked bill. joining us is retired congressman brian baird who tried to pass a similar bill years ago without much luck. also, citizens for responsibility and ethics in washington. she recently testified before congress in support of the stock arkt. act. so congressman, you helped introduce the stock back in 2006. it died over and over again in committee. virtually no one even showed up for some of your hearings. do you think it just died again? >> well, it seems like eric cantor would like to see it die. i don't understand his explanation. the chairmen of the other committees say no, we'll let financial services handle it. it's in their baileywick. why doesn't he set a date? he should say by the end of march we'll bring this bill up for a vote and get it done. it's not that complicated. it asks people to do the same thing in congress that we asked the rest of the country to do. he seems unwilling to make that happen. >> melanie, does it to you seem like this is d