John Sarbanes: “I do want to underscore that the legislation that is before us takes a major step in trying to guarantee the…”

“I do want to underscore that the legislation that is before us takes a major step in trying to guarantee the independence of the Financial Accounting Standards Board in terms of how it provides for its funding, and that is a dramatic improvement of the situation because heretofore the standard board had to seek voluntary funding. So the standards board ended up going to the people for whom it was establishing the standards in order to get money to fund its operations. Well, when it came to the crunch--and this issue was one such crunch as far as the Financial Accounting Standards Board was concerned--the people from whom they were voluntarily getting the money said we are not going to give you any money. You are not going to be able to carry out your activities. So we moved in this legislation because one of the things we require is that the issuers pay a mandatory fee. If you are an issuer, you are registered with the SEC and you have to pay a fee. That goes into a fund and that fund pays for the budget of the Public Accounting Oversight Board and the budget of the Financial Accounting Standards Board, so they are assured a revenue source.”