Wendy Sherman: “I thank the gentleman for yielding. I will speak longer than I usually do on these bills because I both want to persuade…”

“I thank the gentleman for yielding. I will speak longer than I usually do on these bills because I both want to persuade people to support the bill and also provide important information to the entire House that will be part of the legislative history of this bill and is designed to guide the SEC in issuing appropriate regulations. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of S. 945, the Holding Foreign Companies Accountable Act. I thank Chairwoman Waters and her staff for working with my office, and all the members who have been involved in this bill and making this issue a priority. Mr. Speaker, I believe this will be perhaps the most significant piece of investor protection legislation that the Congress adopts this Congress because it applies to some 224 publicly traded companies and assures investors of the financial statement integrity that they expect from all companies that are traded in the United States. Mr. Speaker, let's go back in history a bit. For well over a century, investors in corporations have insisted that the financial statements they get are audited by an independent auditor. But at the beginning of this century, we learned that that was not enough. We saw Enron and WorldCom. We passed the Sarbanes-Oxley bill, and created the PCAOB so that we have a system where not only are the companies' financial statements audited, but the audit is subject to being audited by a governmental entity.…”