Orrin Hatch: “the Senate accomplished two significant feats last week. First, this body took strong action to ensure that candor and…”

“the Senate accomplished two significant feats last week. First, this body took strong action to ensure that candor and accountability will be watchwords in the world of corporate accounting. We have given the Securities and Exchange Commission the tools it needs to better do its job of ensuring that financial statements tell investors, in plain English, how our nation's corporations are really doing. And we crafted 21st-century criminal statutes and tougher penalties for those corporate wrongdoers who willfully mislead investors about corporate finances, and we are still working on that language. Second, and more important, we resisted to a great extent the temptation to turn this bill, on which Senator Sarbanes and Senator Gramm worked so hard, into a tool for demagoguery. With the continuing reports of shoddy bookkeeping at some of our biggest companies, with terrible news coming from Wall Street these past few weeks, and with continuing layoffs at major corporations, it is no wonder that many pundits across the country, and even a few of our colleagues, were tempted to cast about, looking for a bill to support--any bill at all-- that could make them look tough on white-collar crime. But the battle is not over yet. We know that here in Congress, as well as in the regulatory agencies and in State governments, there are still moves afoot to impose more rules, more regulations, and more punishments on American businesses.”