"STOCK's my baby," Baird told Insider in a phone interview.
Therefore, even though he left Congress in 2011, Baird has closely followed its progress.
"People don't realize it," he said, "But the STOCK Act is why the Democrats have the Senate right now."
Baird was referring to the Senate runoffs in Georgia in 2020, where Democratic victories there resulted in the party controlling the Senate.
Democratic Sens. Jon Ossoff and Rafael Warnock won their seats after they repeatedly skewered their Republican opponents, then-Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, over their personal stock portfolios. Financial disclosures showed Loeffler and Perdue dumped millions of dollars in stocks after receiving private briefings about the coronavirus pandemic.
None of those traders would have come to light if it weren't for the reporting requirement in the STOCK Act, Baird said.
Sen. Richard Burr, a Republican of North Carolina who will be retiring when his term ends in 2022, also stepped down from his perch at the top of the Intelligence Committee but the Department of Justice didn't charge him with wrongdoing after he, too, dumped his stocks.
"I dont know of any other ethics measure in recent memory that has led to the defeat of two US senators and the removal of the Intelligence Committee chair," Baird said. "That's a pretty significant impact. That led to the control of the US senate."
Today, Baird said he's still angry that lawmakers — led by former GOP Majority Leader Eric Cantor — quietly went back in 2013 and weakened the STOCK Act so that the disclosures were more difficult to search.
Now, he said, it's time for the law to be strengthened. Some people should face jail time if they willfully pass the reporting deadline, he said, and congressional stock trading should be banned from the time politicians announce their candidacies until six months after they leave office.
"The people who have tried to defend this on policy grounds have been tone deaf to the politics of this," he said. "The American people think this stinks – and they're right."