William Bradley: “And if given the choice, Madam President, what do you think a company is going to do? It is not going to have an…”

“And if given the choice, Madam President, what do you think a company is going to do? It is not going to have an employee stock option program for the secretaries or for the janitors or for the midlevel management or for other levels of the company. It is simply going to abandon them. The CEO's will be able to take care of themselves, as they always do. We passed a provision last year that was supposed to limit executive compensation. I cannot tell you how easy that provision is to get around and how many lawyers have been employed to do just that. That will clearly happen. When you have CEO's who are paid a lot of money, they will find a way to get the money, even with this proposal. Those who will not find a way to do it are the so-called little people in firms that simply seek to have their investment grow with the company as it succeeds. Mr. President, the real debate we are having today is whether the benefits of the FASB proposal outweigh its costs. In its mission statement, FASB states that it should ``promulgate standards only when the expected benefits exceed the perceived costs.'' I feel that the proposal we are looking at today fails this standard--and by a wide margin. The burden of the FASB proposal will fall disproportionately on our Nation's high technology sector. Not only do they rely much more heavily on stock options than other companies, but they also show more stock price volatility.”