stock by corporate insiders who have access to nonpublic information that could affect the stock price can be a criminal offense. just ask hedge fund manager roj roger rat number who got prison for doing it. congressional lawmakers have no corporate responsibilities and have long been considered exempt from insider trading laws. even though they have daily access to nonpublic information and plenty of opportunities to trade on it. >> we know that during the healthcare debate, people were trading healthcare stocks. we know that during the financial crisis of 2008, they were getting out of the market before the rest of america knew what was going on. >> steve croft from 60 minutes is going to join us in a moment. what was going on was gop congressmen like spencer back us of alabama and fellows of the house financial services committee were getting dire top secret briefings on the crisis from treasury secretary hank paulson. at the same time, according to 60 minutes, congressman backus started making stock bets that the market would go down. his office says he never trades on nonpublic information but the timing is suspicious. it's a bipartisan story here. take democrat nancy pelosi, the former house speaker. in 2008 she took part in visa credit card company's invitation only vish stock offering buying 5,000 shares just as legislation that would have hurt credit card companies like visa began its trip through the house. legislation that incidentally failed that time. ultimate ultimately, it 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 in a time that was major legislation affecting the credit card companies making its way through the house. did you consider that to be a conflict of interest? >> i don't know what your point is of your question. is there some point that you want to make with that? >> i guess what i'm asking is, do you think it's all right for a speaker to accept a very preferential favorable stock deal. >> well, we didn't. >> you participated in the ipo. at the time you were speaker of the house. you don't think it was a conflict of interest or have the appearance of that? >> no. only appearance if you decide if you're going to elaborate on a false premise. it's not true and that's that. >> i don't understand what part is not true. >> yes, sir? that i would act upon an investment. >> house minority leader nancy pelosi talking to 60 minutes steve croft. kate bolduan kaud up to the congresswoman today. there's a hearing today in senate taking a look at a couple bills to stop or prevent insider trading among members of congress. this, of course, follows a report which you well know you were one target of this report having to do with that question. would you support such legislation to prevent insider trading amongst members of congress? >> yes. >> is it important to push it through? >> i think it's important. i think that -- i don't think that -- i would hope that it's not as necessary as the hoopde-doo that it seems. i think that we all disclose what we do and that's really important. everything that we do is a matter of public record. so it is in the public domain. so it's not insider. >> whoop dee doo. >> the law only demands disclosure once a year and it may prohibit the deals -- or require lawmakers to put stocks in a blind trust. the in the report, it details more than eyebrow raising stock deals. fofrmer house speaker dennis hastert came into congress wortd a few hundred thousand dollars. he left a multimillionaire. 60 minutes revealed the earmark he got to run a highway past property that he owned. property he later sold and made $2 million on. speaker hastert is now a lobbyist. his office said the land was rising in value before it bent through. brian baird who joins us shortly as well introduced a bill to disclose stock trades every 90 days and bar them from trading on nonpublic ngs. guess what sm it was three years before it got a hearing. here's ha looked like when the hearing finally happened. see all the empty chairs. no one was interested. listen carefully, you'll hear the sound of crickets chirping. lawmakers getting richer while the public approval shrinks into single digits in a recent poll. there were senate hearings on a pair of bills to address the issue. we're going to talk to melanie sloan who testified. first steve croft who is reporting prompted congress to act. how big a problem is it? i was stunned when i saw your report initially. >> i was stunned when i heard about it. >> you had no idea that congress didn't have to abide by insider trading rules? >> no. just in response to nancy pelosi's comments about the whoop dee doo. if you or i did -- wient out an bought stock in a company we were doing a story on or sold the stock, we would get a call from the s.e.c. probably within 48 hours. >> right. >> we'd be in danger of losing our jobs because both of our companies have ethics rules that would prohibit us from doing that. in congress, nothing. >> and the idea that they could be inside hearings and hearing about dire financial information back in 2008 about the stock markets, this is going to tank in a few days, the bubble is bursting and to then short the market so that you will actually profit off the collapse is pretty -- that's stunning. >> one of the most interesting examples is you can be on a healthcare committee, you can have -- learn in advance months in advance the certain drug is going to be disapproved for coverage or for medicare. >> which would have a devastating impact on that company. >> on the drug company and nothing to prohibit you from trading on that. members of congress in healthcare committees did. >> in your report it was amazing because you went around like sort of traipsing around congress to ask people if they knew about this. if they knew about the stock act, the effort to prevent this from happening. and everyone is like, oh, no, never heard of it. sounds like a great idea. never heard of it. >> now, everybody is jumping on the bandwagon. i'm glad to see. this is a bill that didn't draw flies. now it has 138 co-sponsors. everybody wants it now. a few weeks ago -- the bill has been around for years >> the idea too of congress members -- members of congress doing shady land deals as well. buying land in an area where lo and behold they get an earmark for a highway that goes through that area or close to the area and their land is suddenly worth a lot more. >> yeah, it happens all the time. judge greg from new hampshire was involved in -- he got an earmark to buy an old air force base or that was closed down. he was involved in development around it and his brother was one of the people that was a major involvement in it. and the ethics committee, i think, looked at it and said his defense was, look, as long as my constituents benefit from this earmark, then it's perfectly legal for me to do this. as long as somebody else benefits. doesn't matter -- i can benefit too. >> and when you were trying to get members of congress to actually sit down for interviews, speaker boehner, nancy pelosi, nobody would do it? >> no. none of them even called us back. they had people call from their spokesman call and give us a written statement. >> right. that's when you ended up at the press conferences asking in public forums trying to get an answer. >> yes, yes. >> how often -- it's pretty remarkable that -- when you get a call from steve croft of 60 minutes, you would expect that foep call to be returned. >> we usually do. >> i want to bring in melanie sloan into the kfgs. she's executive director in washington. i want to bring congressman brian baird who years ago tried to get the ethics bill ball rolling without much luck. congressman, is this another example members of congress playing by a different set of rules from everyone else? >> i'm afraid it is. when i tried to raise this with people, some thought it applied. others said it would be inconvenient, the implication being that if the kind of rules that apply to other people applied to us, that would be inconvenient. i don't agree with that lonl i can, but it seemed to block the legislation from moving for far too long. >> melanie, after you testified today, did you get the sense that passing the stock act is a priority for congress? >> i definitely got the sense it was a priority for chairman lieberman and ranking member susan collins. they were going to aim to have a markup on the bill by december 15th. but they recognize there were complications to it and it wasn't as simple as passing the legislation in front of them. they need to work on it a little. they had a bunch of securities experts who they'll be talking to and they want it out of their committee by the end of the year. >> it's not just, steve, members of congress, and members of the staff who profit. you talk about political intelligence also. again, i never heard of it. what is that? >> it is essentially as brian baird told us in the 60 minutes piece, a business model successful business model in washington that would be a criminal enterprise anyplace else. it involves political firms usually with former staffers and congressmen and senators on their staff going around, getting nonpublic information and then selling it to clients. which we don't really know very much about the clients other than we know that some hedge funds are involved in it. >> congressman, how does that work? basically, it's like intelligence operatives basically talking to former friends, what's the scuttlebutt about this bill or that bill? >> well, the key is, you know, if it's public information from a hearing, that's okay. but the real value comes from the nonpublic information and that's the intelligence part of it. you're trying to get information before the other guy does and again in the corporate world, if it's from inside the company and not public, it's illegal. in congress it's incredibly valuable and not clearly legal. that's how the intel firms work. they're not happy with my efforts to say you have to disclose your clients so we can see who is trading on this information. >> melanie, does the current bill address these firms at all? >> the current bill does address that. that wasn't discussed at the hearing today. they may well put that question off to another day because it raises other issues that they haven't explored yet and they don't seem in as big a rush to deal with that as they are with insider trading things. it's in large part because of the 60 minutes story and the occupy wall street movement and the incredibly low regard in which most americans are holding congress these days. 46% of americans believe that congress is corrupt. >> and congressman, when you introduced the stock act and you had a handful of co-sponsors, had a difficult time getting any hearings. now as steve pointed out, the bill has over a hundred co-sponsors and counting -- do you feel vindicated? >> well, i won't until we solve the problem. the fact that we have over a hundred co-sponsors. we still need 435. i think every member of congress ought to say this is wrong and fix it. whether or not they vote for it, we have to hold -- than we impose on the rest of the public is not going to fly politically or as good policy. >> i can't imagine steve, any member of congress publicly disagreeing with this idea. >> i think it has to pass and everybody has to sign it otherwise they'll be vulnerable to these kinds of questions in november elections next year. >> we should call up every member of congress and ask them where they stand and get them on the record as we've done in other things. maybe we'll do that. thanks, steve croft, melanie sloan, congressman brian baird, appreciate your time, sir. let us know what you think on facebook, twitter, i'll be tweeting tonight. a pharmacy full of drugs being prescribed to young kids. we're not just talking ritalin, two drugs, three drugs. we're talking five drugs combinations of mind altering medications. we're talking about a report, and perspectives from dr. sanjay gupta. ungodly discipline, our series continues looking at the disciplining of kids in schools. a former assistant principal who lobbies for corporal punishment in parochial schools is accused of paddling his former students. those students say they will never forget it. >> whack, whack. i would never cry and the man hated that i wouldn't cry. this time he got me to cry. but -- i said this guy isn't going to stop. >> our gary tuchman investigates ahead on the program. 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[ male announcer ] time is running out. a new medicare plan? you only have until wednesday, december 7th to enroll. don't wait another day, call now to find out hohealcare mecarens age you're looking for. i'm looking for help paying for my prescriptions. [ male announcer ] that's a part d prescription drug plan. tell us about your prescriptions and we can help you select the right plan. like a stand-alone plan, or you can combine part d and medicare supplement plans for complete coverage. is there a single plan that combines medicare parts a & b with medical and drug coverage? [ male announcer ] absolutely. a medicare advantage plan can give you doctor, hospital and prescription drug coverage for nothing more than what you already pay for medicare part b. don't wait another day. you only have until december 7th to make sure you get the medicare coverage you need. call unitedhealthcare to learn about medicare plans that may be right for you. with some plans, you can enroll right over the phone. don't wait. call now. keeping them honest. on kids and mind altering drugs. psychiatric medications prescribed by doctors and given in doses that are mind blowing to society's vulnerable kids. powerful tranquilizers and sedatives, all the familiar brands, prozac, ambien, zoloft. with the familiar side effects given to kids, sometimes infants. it's been documented in a new report from the government accountability office, the gao which looked at foster kids and other children in five states. what it found is that foster kids were anywhere from two four times more likely to be prescribed psychotropic drugs. found more than 20,000 kids taking more than the maximum recommended dosages. higher dosages than recommended. 1700 kids in both groups were taking five or more different drugs at the same time. five mind altering drugs or more at once. according to the report, more than 4,000 infants were on psychotropic drugs. kids a-year-old or younger given drugs that no child should actually take. the report points out that many of the foster kids have greater mental health needs because of what they've been through in life. yet, the report warns there are potentially at higher risk for health problems "according to gao's experts, no evidence support the use of five or more psychotropic drugs in adults or children." thousands of kids in or out of foster care on such combinations. many of the drugs are nightmarishly hard to quit as we found. >>. [ screaming ] >> those were kids going through withdrawal. the question is, are we overmedicating kids, in particular the most vulnerable of kids and if so, why? digging deeper, sanjay gupta, the court special appointed -- the number of kids being medicated seems high. in some cases kids run five or more drugs at one time and at levels exceeding fda regulations. what do you make of it? >> first of all, there's not a lot of data or guidelines and using some of these medications in children that young. so it's striking just from that regard alone. flying a little bit blind and then as you read, anderson, sometimes five or even more of the medications being used in the same child, it was pretty striking. a lot of my colleagues and i were talking about this today that the concern of some of the foster children have been neglected, have been abused may need some sort of therapy but using this many medications, i think, was concerning for everybody. also, the longer term effect an on the brain. something i'm interested in. we just don't know. a lot of the medications, anderson, are tested in adults first. a lot of the data in terms of safety comes out of adult data. it's hard to apply some of that to children. there can be long-term effects on the brain and some of the medications cause significant weight gain. some of the medications can double even triple the rigs risk of a child developing diabetes down the road. you know, i think there's lots of reasons to be concerned. with one thing i tell you quick. here's what michael says. we talk to others who say in the general population, we're seeing the study now. but in the general population, nonmedicated children, children not in foster care, the numbers if you sat down and analyzed them would also likely be strikingly high. >> michael, you say this is one of the biggest concerns that you're hearing from people working with foster kids. i mean, are kids in the system being given drugs that they don't need? because that's what it seems like in this report. >> it really feels like that. the numbers that you read are awful. when you hear the stories, the suffering that kids are going through when they have five. but they're even more medications some kids have. there are kids with 12. they describe being like zombies and the suffering they go through is terrible. we feel strongly that this is a serious issue and it needs to be changed. >> i mean, i can understand, michael, kids who are in the foster care system may be obviously they're dealing with issues that come from different backgrounds and they might have a higher incidence of needing medication. but the combinations, the high numbers of combinations beyond what's actually effective, that may be counter active and also the age of some of the kids, giving children under the age of one-year-old some of these medications, this is as sanjay was saying, uncharted territory. >> i can't imagine giving infants these drugs. but on the other hand, we've heard of toddlers, toddlers who have been placed in hospitals for behavior problems and then they're put on medications. i'm not a physician, but i can't believe that we can't do better, can't provide better care, better thoughtful diagnosis when we do need to use these drugs. to me, this is one of the big issues is this is a system that is chronically short of time f