On the recordDecember 20, 2017
I thank the gentlewoman from California for yielding. It is certainly my pleasure to be on the side of the gentlewoman from California. Every time we have got in these fights to attack Dodd- Frank, she has been on the right side of the issue. So let me clearly, though my voice is a little raspy, speak on behalf of those, as my colleagues have spoken about, of us who certainly have a degree of education and receive those long statements where there are big fights and the print is so small. I will tell you that the proxy advisers are representing not us, but those vulnerable pensioners who put everything they have ever had in that pot, and those advisers give those public pension funds the counsel and advice that is necessary. First of all, this bill is entirely impractical. Pension plans and other institutional investors often hold shares in thousands of public companies. The bill will require proxy advisory firms, who provide voting recommendations to these shareholders, to provide the management with more than 4,000 public companies with the opportunity to present detailed comments on the firm's draft recommendations before paying shareholders receive a final report. It also wants to burden them with all kinds of extra trinkets that they have to give information about, an unprecedented right to weigh in by the corporations on voting recommendations, executive compensation, nondiscrimination policies. Again, the proxy advisers work with the public pension funds.…
