Laws For Ye, Not For Me!
Lawmakers just love to pass laws -- laws for other people. Yale law prof Steven L. Carter writes at Bloomberg:

The recent publicity surrounding the very old news that members of Congress aren't prohibited from trading stock using nonpublic information has the House and Senate running for cover. Hastily drafted bills are picking up co-sponsors on both sides of the aisle.

Yet it is something of a wonder that there is so much public excitement at the discovery that regulations that apply to lots of other people turn out to be largely irrelevant to those who serve in Congress. This isn't an exception to congressional practice. It is, far too often, business as usual.

...Critics have lamented that no equivalent of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act applies to Congress. The chief executives of public companies must certify their accounts, and face fines of up to $5 million and as many as 20 years in prison if they do so falsely. Members of Congress (like all federal officials) can make up numbers out of whole cloth without any sanction at all. Incorrect corporate numbers can mislead markets. Incorrect federal budget numbers can mislead the nation. (Perhaps the federal budget, like corporate balance sheets, should be vetted by independent third-party auditors.)

Examples abound. Federal minimum-wage laws apply to private employers and federal agencies; but, once again, Congress isn't an agency. For the same reason, the Freedom of Information Act doesn't apply. The National Labor Relations Act exempts the federal government generally, but there are special rules relating to collective bargaining and unfair labor practices of federal employees -- rules that don't, however, apply to Congress. The Merit System Protection statutes shield personnel in executive agencies, and even in the Administrative Office of the United States Courts; not in Congress. And so on.

Even when Congress does decide to apply statutes to itself, members have trouble resisting the temptation to treat themselves differently. So, for example, Title III of the Civil Rights Act of 1991 extended the reach of several (not all) antidiscrimination statutes to cover congressional employees, but with provisos stripping the protections of much of their force.