David Obey: “I recognize this specific discussion is aimed at Sarbanes-Oxley. But in fact I have been around here for awhile, and I…”

“I recognize this specific discussion is aimed at Sarbanes-Oxley. But in fact I have been around here for awhile, and I know that this occurs in the context of a much broader and much more insidious pattern. The fact is if you take a look at what Republican controlled Congresses have tried to do since 1995, you will see that they have voted for appropriation after appropriation that cut the SEC budget even below the President's request. What that meant was that while that agency's workload was expanding and exploding, the ability of the SEC staff to keep up with that workload was being undermined by this body. The percentage of all corporate filings reviewed by the agency declined dramatically from 21 percent in 1991 to about 8 percent in 2000. Is it any wonder that the Enrons of this world were convinced that they could get away with anything. After Enron failed and after we had a series of other corporations that failed, and their officers went to jail, people got scared. They decided we better do something or we will be seen as being complicit in the abandonment of government's obligation to see that investors are protected. So what happened is they were scared finally in backing into passing Sarbanes-Oxley.”