Jim Sensenbrenner: “Mr. Speaker, Xerox, WorldCom, Global Crossing, Enron, and Tyco are among several of the U.S. elite corporations now in…”

“Mr. Speaker, Xerox, WorldCom, Global Crossing, Enron, and Tyco are among several of the U.S. elite corporations now in Wall Street's Hall of Shame. They have all apparently cooked the books and served their employees with a recipe for disaster with pink slips and lost pension funds. Enron overstated its profits by over half a billion dollars in 1997. WorldCom admitted that it had hidden a staggering $3.50 billion in losses. Many Americans have been hurt badly by this irresponsible behavior, and tragically, everybody's 401(k) assets have tanked. Employees who receive stock options as part of their income package have lost their life savings, on top of losing their jobs. Much of these shenanigans appear to have begun in the 1990s, the decade when personal accountability and responsibility became irrelevant. It appears that for some in corporate America, the incentives for fraud and ill-gotten gain outweigh the consequences of getting caught. Well, maybe the potential penalties for these crimes are just not strong enough. Today, it is our duty to fix that. Mr. Speaker, these few bad actors have not only harmed the employees that depended on them, the public that invested in them, but also the integrity and reputation of all of corporate America, which is the backbone of the greatest economic machine the world has ever seen.”