Date: 2016-02-03
Speaker: MAXINE WATERS (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: California

Mr. Chairman. I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman and Members. when my colleague from Massachusetts came to the floor and started to talk about this bill. he said this is a bad bill. and included in this bill a total of five bad bills. As we go through each of these bills. we cannot help but wonder why any public policymaker would want to endanger small businesses and investors in the way that this bill does. One must ask ones self why. why would any elected official want to eliminate financial disclosures for employees regarding their stock compensation? Why would you want to do that? Why dont you want employees to know what they are being given? Why dont you want employees to understand that this stock that they are being given may or may not be worth the paper that it is written on? Why would we want to keep this information away from them? As it was stated by the gentlewoman from Illinois. she said basically that many of these companies are not increasing wages. As a matter of fact. we have stagnation in wages in this country and in all of the major companies. for example. So what is happening is these employees believe that when they are being given stock instead of a raise. then maybe they have something valuable. They need to know what they are getting. They need to know exactly what their company is holding out to them is valuable. So I raise the question. why would any public policymaker want to keep this information from employees? Further. the opposite side of the aisle always talks about they are for dealing with crime. that they are about criminal justice. But here they are allowing bad actors to engage in small business mergers and acquisitions. I am talking about people who have been convicted. I am talking about people whom you have administrative orders against. I am talking about swindlers. I am talking about bad people that will be allowed. by this bill. to engage in small business mergers and acquisitions. I dont understand it. and I dont know why. Increasingly. the people of this country are looking at the Members of Congress. and they are saying that they are not with us. they are against us. and that we dont have anybody that is really protecting our interests. More and more. it is being discussed. They are finally getting on to it that somehow too many of the Members of Congress are siding with the big guys. siding with the large corporations. and with the big banks. and not looking out for the interests of the people. They want to know why. Again. title III of this bill would significantly expand an exemption for registration granted by the SEC to certain mergers and acquisition brokers who deal with small businesses without providing significant protections for those businesses or investors. Last Congress when we considered this exemption. it was meant to prompt action by the SEC to finalize its noaction letter to exempt these merger and acquisition brokers from registration. Two weeks after that bill passed the House floor. the SEC granted relief. Yet you wouldnt know it if you read this bill. This bill ignores that relief. and. worse. it inexplicably omits eightomits eightof the important investment protections that it includes. As a result. it would allow. again. these bad actors. these cheaters. these people who commit fraud. and these scammers to use this exemption providing them with an opportunity just to swindle our small businesses. Yet they claim they support small business. It is fashionable to say. "I am for small business." Everybody is for small business. But when you take a look at what we do. you can determine who is for the small business and who really are for the big businesses. for the swindlers. and for the cheaters who rob small businesses of the opportunity to be successful. It would also allow M&A brokers to merge public shell companies that have no assets of their own. Even some of my Republican colleagues who will be offering an amendment to add in these two protections are unable to justify the omission. but my friends on the opposite side of the aisle completely ignore the other six investor protections in the SECs no action relief. I am not going to go any further with that. That is quite obvious. But let me say this. Not only do we have these bad bills with bad public policy. we have a trick in the bill and the bill attempts to tie the hands of the SEC by saying they need to go backoh. back to 1934 and review everything that they have done. all of these regulations. Do you know why they are doing that? It is the same reason that they wont support them getting additional funding to do their job. They just want to tie their hands so that they wont be able to do the job that they are supposed to do. When we call these bills bad. we are simply not sharing with you some rhetoric about some meaningless harm that may come because of these bills. We are telling you these are harmful bills. these are truly bad bills. I reserve the balance of my time.