Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of this resolution, providing congressional disapproval of a rule submitted by the SEC relating to disclosure of payment by resource extraction issuers. Section 1504 of the Dodd-Frank Act requires a public company engaged in the commercial development of natural gas, minerals, or oil to report payments made to foreign governments for these natural resources. At a time when our President and my Republican colleagues are looking to cut regulations on businesses, the SEC estimates that ongoing compliance costs for this rule to be as high as $591 billion. Let me say that again: one agency, one rule, $591 billion. Let me go back to something many of my colleagues have already mentioned today, the SEC mission. I will quote from their own website. The mission of the SEC is to ``protect investors, maintain fair, orderly, and efficient markets, and facilitate capital formation.'' If investor protection is truly the mission of the SEC, then why was this provision of the Dodd-Frank listed in the section titled ``miscellaneous provisions''? Mr. Speaker, American companies should be protected, and no one denies that. But to put them at a competitive disadvantage against their foreign counterparts by implementing this rule is just plain wrong. Now, my friends on the other side of the aisle will argue that Republicans are gutting an important transparency policy meant to combat corruption. Well, Mr.…”