Restoring American Financial Stability Act of 2010--Continued

Floor Speech

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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I wanted to discuss very briefly an amendment that I have filed with respect to the independence of compensation consultants.

As we all know, executive compensation has been a significant issue in this country. Much of executive compensation is set on the advice of compensation consultants. I had an interesting meeting earlier this year with the Obama administration's ``pay czar,'' he is called, and he said when he was in the process of trying to work out how he should try to restructure executive compensation, he tried to find an independent compensation consultant to advise him. He found he could not find a single compensation consultant in the country who met his standards for independence.

This amendment would ask the Securities and Exchange Commission to set standards for independence for compensation consultants, so that when, consistent with this legislation, the compensation committee of a board has to evaluate which compensation consultant to hire, they get an independent seal of approval from the SEC, and they can know they are doing the right thing; and, of course, we can assure that we have independent compensation consultants and not people who get paid in order to encourage higher salaries for CEOs in our country.

I had a brief discussion about this with the chairman. He expressed some interest in it. I understand we will be continuing to work together to try to get this language incorporated into the final bill. I expressed my appreciation to him for his consideration. I believe it matches the language on the House side, so maybe it is something we can do in conference. But, clearly, this question of compensation is an area where the chairman has been a leader, and I look forward to working with him.

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