Steve Lynch: “I thank the gentlewoman for yielding. It is very rare that I get to speak in opposition to such bad legislation, but not…”

“I thank the gentlewoman for yielding. It is very rare that I get to speak in opposition to such bad legislation, but not only do we have a single bill that is bad legislation, my friends across the aisle have packaged five bad bills and put them all together. My only regret is that I only have 3 minutes to speak about these bills. Let me single one out, the Encouraging Employee Ownership Act of 2015. Currently, employee benefit plans must disclose information to employees who invest in those plans if the plan's assets are above $5 million. H.R. 1675, the Encouraging Employee Ownership Act of 2015, now 2016, modifies SEC rule 701 by allowing private companies to compensate their employees up to $10 million, indexed for inflation. So they can pay their employees in stock, basically. But the key here is that they don't have to provide the same information that they would to outside investors in that same stock. Therein lies the danger here. This means that employees in smaller companies, start-ups, especially--small drug companies, small software companies--those employees with smaller plans, oftentimes those companies are more subject to, more vulnerable to, the ups and downs of the economy. These are the most vulnerable. So the employees in those small plans that are paid with company stock would be less protected as to how their stocks are performing. Last Congress I voted against a similar bill, H.R. 4571, when it was marked up in our committee.…”