Biggert, Foster clash over Keystone pipeline stock

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Judy Biggert

Updated: March 11, 2012 8:47AM

Longtime U.S. Rep. Judy Biggert has been a vocal champion for the Keystone Oil pipeline that President Barack Obama has, at least for the moment, killed.

Biggert, who represents parts of Aurora and Naperville, backs the pipeline to pump oil from Canada through Nebraska to Louisiana.

“I support Keystone because it would create thousands of jobs and would benefit my constituents,” she said.

But former U.S. Rep. Bill Foster, one of three Democrats running in the March primary to be Biggert’s opponent in the fall election, says the fact that Biggert’s husband owns between $1,000 and $15,000 worth of stock in TransCanada — the company that wants to build the pipeline — means Biggert might be letting her own financial interests color her judgement.

“Congresswoman Biggert should divest herself of the Keystone stock she owns and, at a minimum, recuse herself from voting on the Keystone project,” Foster said.

Biggert says Foster is trying to make campaign heat out of a non-issue. The TransCanada stock is one of the smaller ones in her husband’s portfolio and would hardly bring her a windfall if the pipeline were approved, she said.

“Mr. Foster should mind his own business,” Biggert said. “Unlike Mr. Foster, my record of support for American energy is clear and unambiguous. My husband purchased TransCanada stock in 2004. I should tell my husband he should not own a stock? I don’t get that.”

Owning stock of companies that could do business with the U.S. government is not the kind of activity Congress is trying to prevent with the “Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge” or STOCK Act, Biggert said. The STOCK Act is designed to prevent someone purchasing stock based on insider knowledge that congressmen in closed meetings have access to, but the general public does not.

“This (pipeline) has nothing to do with the STOCK Act,” Biggert said. “If I was to know this was coming up and he bought it right now, that would be a different question.”

The STOCK Act passed the House Thursday by a 417-2 vote. Biggert voted for the act. The House Bill will now have to be reconciled with a similar Senate Bill before going to the president for a signature.

Some people accused Biggert of being against the STOCK Act because she raised notes of caution at a committee hearing and did not join other Democratic and Republican members of Congress from Illinois in co-sponsoring the bill.

“I hope that we don’t over-react — we have a tendency to do that every time there’s a crisis,” Biggert told the Bill’s sponsor, Rep. Tom Walz, D-Minn., who held a hearing on the bill shortly after a 60 Minutes story on members of Congress making money from insider knowledge.

Biggert said the bill’s 90-day window for members to report new stocks was too short.

“I think people come here with very high standards. I think all of this just takes us down,” she said.

Walz told Biggert, “I couldn’t agree more with you” and thanked the 14-year veteran for her “words of wisdom.”

In December, the Sunlight Foundation reported Biggert was one of four members of Congress who owned stock in TransCanada who were actively pushing the pipeline.

Foster said he has not made up his mind whether he would support the pipeline. Foster faces former Aurora Township Clerk Juan Thomas and Orland Fire Protection District President Jim Hickey in the Democratic primary for the new 11th Congressional District, which includes Aurora, Naperville and Joliet.

Biggert is the sole GOP candidate in the primary, after two other candidates were tossed off the ballot last week for having invalid signatures on their election petitions.