Psst. Got a hot stock tip. XYZ Mega Corp. will get a big government contract. Buy its stock. I know this because I’ve been sitting in on the meetings.

Let’s say you were an executive of XYZ Mega Corp. and authored this tip; you would be in violation of insider trading laws. But if you were a member of Congress, you’d get to skirt the law that would land constituents in jail.

Well, so much for public trust and fairness.

The duplicity, chronicled in a recent “60 Minutes” report, ought to make voters’ blood boil. House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, Rep. Spencer Bachus, R-Ala., and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif, and her husband are featured prominently in the report in regard to questionable stock trades, presumably with information obtained from their positions in public service.

When confronted on camera, Boehner and Pelosi denied wrongdoing and seemed incredulous that their activities would raise questions about financial conflicts and insider trading.

But Brian Baird, a former congressman from Washington state who lost several legislative battles to end insider trading in Congress, says it best: “There should only be one thing in your mind when you’re drafting legislation: ‘Is this good for the United States of America?’ That’s it. If you’re starting to say to yourself ‘how’s this going to affect my investments?’ you’ve got a mixed agenda and a mixed purpose for being there.”

It’s not too much to require senators, representatives and their staffs to abide by rules that apply to the rest of us. School board members, corporate executives, public workers and others are supposed to adhere to certain rules to avoid financial conflicts. So what makes senators, representatives and their staffs so special? We dare say it is because Congress gets to write the rules, and the enforcement agencies, which depend on Congress for funding, don’t have the stomach for a hard-to-prove political fight.

Some legal experts contend that lawmakers have duties of trust and confidence to constituents who also may be shareholders in the companies, which means that lawmakers violate existing insider trading laws whenever they trade on nonpublic information. In any event, lawmakers should have investments in blind trusts, be explicitly barred from trading on privileged information, and mandated to report stock trades in a timely manner to avert conflicts.

The other day, Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass., introduced a bill to prohibit members or employees of Congress, as well as executive branch employees, from using nonpublic information for investing or any attempt at personal financial gain. Thats a good start, but let’s see whether Congress moves quickly on serious reforms or scuttles the effort.

Boehner traded stock in health insurance companies as he railed against the Obama health care legislation. Bachus, then on the House Financial Services Committee, might have used information from confidential Federal Reserve meetings to take profitable positions while global financial markets imploded.

While House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and her husband, participated in at least eight initial public stock offerings, including one in 2008 from Visa while Congress was considering legislation to curb credit card practices.

Congressional trading on privileged information must end.