Letter to Chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Christopher Cox

June 22, 2007

The Honorable Christopher Cox

Chairman

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission

100 F Street, NE

Washington, DC 20549

Dear Chairman Cox:

We take strong exception to the recent letter you received from Henry Waxman, Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and Dennis Kucinich, Chairman of the Subcommittee on Domestic Policy urging you to refrain from accelerating the Blackstone IPO until Congress has had an opportunity to review this matter. We construe this letter as nothing more than raw political interference in a regulatory matter.

The Waxman/Kucinich request is an unwarranted interference in capital markets, which if successful, will have a chilling effect on those markets. Their behavior attacks the very underpinnings of the American economy by exerting political interference in the rights of American entrepreneurs to raise money from the public. Further, the Waxman/Kucinich action goes beyond the legitimate oversight role of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and the Congress generally.

To suggest as Chairman Waxman and Chairman Kucinich do that this IPO needs more public scrutiny is disingenuous, since this IPO has received more media coverage than most IPO's ever get. Perhaps Mr. Waxman and Mr. Kucinich are not aware, or they have not bothered to read, the prospectus associated with this IPO. The reason a prospectus exists is to alert the investing public of the potential risk of an investment. The Blackstone prospectus is filled with risk statements.

The letter suggests a general disdain for the free market system which has brought this country unparalleled growth and made it the envy of the world. Our economy has permitted us to be the engine driving world economic growth. But this attempt to exert unprecedented political interference in a regulatory matter before you cannot succeed. It will cast a pall over future IPO's, undermine the predictability upon which our economic system functions, and raise the specter of ex post facto legal changes to the laws and regulations that govern that economic system. This action, along with attempts to retroactively change the tax structure applicable to this IPO, reminds us of the actions of Putin's Russia in dismantling the oil company, Yukos. We have all expressed strong concerns over the backsliding of democracy and the free market system in Russia. We should certainly not condone similar actions in the United States.

We urge you to let the SEC regulatory process proceed without the raw political interference exemplified by the Waxman/Kucinich request.

Sincerely,

Tom Davis, Ranking Member, Committee on Oversight and Government Reform

Darrell Issa, Ranking Member, Committee on Oversight and Government Reform

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