Darrell Issa: “In closing, I have been on the board of a public company, of multiple public companies. I have taken a company public…”

“In closing, I have been on the board of a public company, of multiple public companies. I have taken a company public, as have many of the supporters of this amendment. I know the cost of taking a company public. It is in the millions. It is not in the thousands. I also know that whether it is Bernie Madoff or Enron or WorldCom or a host of much smaller companies that have deceived the public, the Securities and Exchange Commission has an obligation to continuously improve the material available to the financial community and to make sure that it is equally searchable and equally accessible to the large and small investor. That is the reason that I strongly believe that elimination of paper, not covered in this bill, should not be replaced by elimination in any way of the reporting under the digital reporting requirements of the Securities and Exchange Commission. I would urge Members that this is narrowly focused, much more narrow than the bill itself. It recognizes that if somebody wants to go public and not do this, they would have the ability to do so. As Mrs. Maloney said, for 60 percent of the reporting companies to be exempted out would begin to rot away the underpinnings of a 5-year-old program that has been successful. I would hope people would realize that it is not a necessary, a draconian backwards step to before 2011.…”