SEC Regulatory Accountability Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Chair, as someone who believes the federal government has a responsibility to set and enforce clear and transparent rules of the road for our markets to operate fairly, efficiently and effectively, I believe conducting cost-benefit analysis of proposed regulations is both appropriate and necessary. Moreover, I think rules and regulations should be periodically reviewed--and eliminated or modified where needed--to ensure our markets are functioning optimally.

If that's what this legislation was about, it would have my support. It's not--which is why I will be opposing H.R. 1062 today.

Although you wouldn't know it from listening to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, the Securities and Exchange Commission already performs--and is already required to perform--extensive economic analysis regarding the regulations it promulgates, including rigorous cost-benefit analysis. Furthermore, in addition to protecting investors, SEC rulemakings are also already required to ``promote efficiency, competition and capital formation.'' Indeed, entities ranging from the Chamber of Commerce to the Government Accountability Office have all recently validated the SEC's current staff guidance in this regard.

Unfortunately, rather than promoting clear and transparent rules of the road, arrived at through rigorous cost-benefit analysis, today's legislation is very plainly an effort to do the opposite--to block even the most carefully considered regulation by creating a ``paralysis of analysis'' at the Securities and Exchange Commission in order to undermine the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform law.

Mr. Chair, it was the absence of clear and transparent rules of the road that precipitated the Great Recession, and now that the economy has finally begun to heal, we are simply not going back to the conditions that created the crisis in the first place.

I urge a no vote.

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