This is how Congress works...

The Senate Armed Services Committee prohibits its staff and presidential appointees requiring Senate confirmation from owning stocks or bonds in 48,096 companies that have Defense Department contracts. But the senators who sit on the influential panel are allowed to own any assets they want. And they have owned millions in interests in these firms...

The prohibition is representative of how members of Congress set strict rules on investing for others in sensitive posts in the corporate world and government while allowing themselves to manage their finances however they please...

Nineteen of the 28 senators on the Senate Armed Services Committee held assets in companies that do business with the Pentagon between 2004 and last year, according to an analysis of financial disclosure forms by The Washington Post. Those holdings were worth a total of $3.8 million to $10.2 million...

Ethics laws allow senators to hold stocks in industries they oversee. They also may push and vote for programs that could improve the bottom lines of companies in which they own stock. They are precluded, however, from taking official actions that could boost their personal wealth if they are the sole beneficiaries...

During a closed-door hearing held before the 1961 confirmations of Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara and other presidential appointees, some committee members said it was time to address the differing standards. "We have got to go the whole way and put the same rules on ourselves that we put on these people in the government," said Sen. Stuart Symington (D-Mo.), according to a transcript of the hearing...

"When you pass a law like that, you will have the greatest mass resignation that the world has ever seen," said Sen. Prescott Bush (R-Conn.), whose son and grandson were both president. "For heaven's sake, if you want to bring together a lot of people that do not have any touch with reality in this country to make the laws, God help the United States, in my judgment."

The matter never came to a vote, and the exemption continued.

More at the Washington Post link.