Of all the ways for a congressperson to transform her access and power into personal wealth, trading on inside information is close to socially optimal. It’s basically victimless (unlike graft), doesn’t necessarily[1] distort incentives toward good policy or law (unlike accepting bribes), and doesn’t impose a direct cost on taxpayers (like increasing salaries).

If we can’t foreclose all of the avenues from power and access to wealth, we should let them have the least harmful one and clamp down on the others. Hell, we should give them a million on margin and at the start of their term.

Note that the simple solution of ‘less venal congresspeople’ is outside feasible region.

[1] obviously concentrated positions could distort policy choices, but they could be prevented from holding more than x% in one name for more than y quarters of disclosure.