This is one of those sporadic reminders that Pelosi, for all her liberalism, will protect the rich when it’s in her interest to do so. She went to bat for the SALT deduction recently because her party relies on wealthy liberals from high-tax blue states to bankroll it.

Today she went to bat for letting members of Congress buy and sell individual stocks despite the obvious risk of insider trading because, well, she and her colleagues in Congress are mostly rich people who want to get richer buying and selling stocks.

You’ll never hear a Democratic politician cite the free-market system as a trump card in a policy dispute as quickly and reflexively as Pelosi does here. In any other context, lefties will insist that the free market must yield to regulation in order to limit corruption and promote the common good. Ask the Speaker about a regulation that might hit her in her own wallet, though, and suddenly she’s a libertarian.

REPORTER: "Should members of congress and their spouses be banned from trading individual stocks while serving in congress?"

PELOSI: "No…We are a free market economy. They should be able to participate in that." pic.twitter.com/2SNqSCwFEU

— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) December 15, 2021

Members of Congress should be barred from trading individual stocks, of course. They have intimate knowledge of nonpublic policy proposals that will affect the value of American businesses once those proposals become law. And they’re forever being solicited by lobbyists who might be willing to share other nonpublic info to which they happen to be privy in exchange for access and influence with Congress.

In fact, not only should members be barred, their spouses should be barred too. But the Pelosis wouldn’t like that.

Even liberals find her answer appalling:

This is so bad. Totally indefensible on the substance and the politics. https://t.co/pSLYtWZIN8

— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) December 15, 2021

It was just last week that AOC, the blind squirrel who occasionally finds a nut, stumbled onto this righteous truth:

It is absolutely ludicrous that members of Congress can hold and trade individual stock while in office.

The access and influence we have should be exercised for the public interest, not our profit. It shouldn’t be legal for us to trade individual stock with the info we have. https://t.co/Z3UZej2eC2

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) December 8, 2021

That’s correct, and I’d be surprised if anyone except members of Congress themselves, their families, and, uh, libertarians disagree. If you want to make money on the market while serving in Congress, you should be forced to choose between investing in the market as a whole via index funds or outsourcing your investment to an independent manager via mutual funds. And if that’s intolerable to you, good news: You don’t have to be a member of Congress.

That’s the logic of vaccine mandates, which most Democrats support, right? You don’t have to get the shot if you don’t want to, but if you don’t want to follow the boss’s rules then you should quit. The same should apply to Congress and members who want to trade.

This subject came up at today’s presser because Business Insider recently published a feature titled “Conflicted Congress” about the investment habits of members and their staff. The takeaway:

49 members of Congress and 182 senior-level congressional staffers who have violated a federal conflicts-of-interest law.

Nearly 75 federal lawmakers who held stocks in COVID-19 vaccine makers Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, or Pfizer in 2020, with many of them buying or selling these stocks in the early weeks of the pandemic.

15 lawmakers tasked with shaping US defense policy that actively invest in military contractors.

More than a dozen environmentally-minded Democrats who invest in fossil fuel companies or other corporations with concerning environmental track records.

There’s more at the link. Pelosi herself employs a senior staffer who violated the STOCK Act. One would think that the House’s most powerful politician would at least feign concern about the perception of rampant impropriety in her branch of government — not to mention other branches — at a moment when Americans’ disintegrating trust in institutions is steering them towards characters like Trump as an alternative. But she couldn’t be clearer about how little she cares.

I’m tempted to say that Kevin McCarthy should make this a priority for the House in 2023, when the GOP takes over, as it would be a quick and easy way to earn some “good government” cred with Americans. But who are we kidding? There’s a reason why the terrible policy permitting members to trade individual stocks has abided this long. It’s bipartisan. McCarthy will probably give the same answer she did once he’s Speaker. Exit question: Since the Democratic majority in the House appears to have an expiration date, shouldn’t Pelosi want to pass a ban on trading just to dare the GOP to undo it two years from now? Or is she afraid that they won’t and then she and her corrupt colleagues actually will be barred from trading?