By Mark Fischenich, Mankato Free Press

On Sunday, Congressman Tim Walz had just four colleagues among the 535 members of the House and Senate who had signed on to his bill prohibiting insider trading on Capitol Hill.

By Tuesday night, the number was approaching 35 and growing.

Walz hadn’t become suddenly more persuasive over the weekend. The difference was a Sunday night broadcast by CBS news show “60 Minutes” about Congress being exempt from the insider trading laws that apply to other Americans who use non-public information to enrich themselves in the stock market.

“The people who make the rules are the political class in Washington,” said Hoover Institution fellow Peter Schweizer in the “60 Minutes” story.

“And they’ve conveniently written them in such a way that they don’t apply to themselves.”

Schweizer has studied trades made by members of Congress and believes some lawmakers use the special access to information provided by their positions to enrich themselves in a way that would be illegal in the corporate world.

“We know that during the financial crisis of 2008 they were getting out of the market before the rest of America really knew what was going on,” Schweizer said.

He pointed to Alabama Rep. Spencer Bachus, the Republican chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, who was one of the congressional leaders briefed in September of 2008 by Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke.

The small group of high-ranking lawmakers were told in the closed-door meetings that a global financial meltdown could occur within days.

“What we know is that those meetings were held one day and literally the next day Congressman Bachus would engage in buying stock options based on the apocalyptic briefings he had the day before from the Fed chairman and treasury secretary,” Schweizer told “60 Minutes” reporter Steve Kroft. “I mean, talk about a stock tip.”

Bachus “profited at a time when most Americans were losing their shirts,” Kroft reported.

But he didn’t do anything illegal under the laws applying to Congress, and that’s what Walz has been trying to change since 2007.

The chief sponsor of the STOCK Act then was Rep. Brian Baird, a Democrat from Washington, who approached the new congressman from Mankato to see if he’d sign on to the bill. Baird told him about the STOCK Act — Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge — and Walz was surprised it wasn’t already illegal.

“I’m coming from the perspective of ‘Are you kidding me? This isn’t a law already?’” Walz said.

When Baird retired, Walz took over as chief sponsor but had no more luck than Baird at rallying support for the bill. Until Sunday night.

“I certainly take no pleasure in that it took (a ‘60 Minutes’ report),” he said. “The good news is that I guess there’s a lot of people around here now paying attention.”

The decades-old TV news magazine, once the most watched show in America, still averages about 14 million viewers. And Sunday’s story had an impact.

Along with 28 new sponsors in the House, a Democrat and Republican in the Senate have also introduced a variation of the bill, which previously had no backers in that body.

Walz said he’s seeing indications of support for the bill from House leaders and he thinks there’s a chance that the sudden momentum could result in passage of the law in coming weeks. With congressional approval ratings at abysmal levels, top lawmakers from both parties might be eager to show they can accomplish something on a bipartisan basis.

Walz said his support of the law isn’t based on a belief that the bulk of his colleagues are using their positions to enrich themselves. But the absence of a prohibition on insider trading provides a temptation that shouldn’t be there for members of Congress and their staffs, and the STOCK Act would provide some evidence to a discouraged population that lawmakers can police themselves.

“If you didn’t think Congress’ approval rating can go any lower than 9 percent, have them watch the ‘60 Minutes’ story,” he said. “And that’s a problem.”