RM Warren Opening Remarks at Securities and Exchange Commission Hearing

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Our markets are the envy of the world, and they deliver enormous opportunity. I want American businesses to thrive, but markets without rules mean that the wealthy and the powerful take all the gains, while small businesses and workers and consumers get cheated. The SEC's job is to make sure that our markets are fair and honest, but nearly a year into running the agency, Chair Atkins is unleashing a golden age of fraud. The billionaires will cash in, while millions of American businesses and families will end up paying the price. Now, as soon as he was confirmed, Chair Atkins set to work letting scammers off the hook and unraveling investor protection rules that keep everyday investors from getting cheated. At every fork in the road, he has turned toward Wall Street over Main Street. And here are just a few examples. For decades, the SEC has monitored corporations and refused to let them go public if they're scams. Now, thanks to Chair Atkins, that oversight has nearly disappeared. Investors have said over and over they want more information so they can make better decisions. But Chair Atkins is working to slash current disclosures so that companies can hide just how risky they've become. Under Chair Atkins, the SEC has also made it easier for companies to prevent investors from going to court when those investors have been cheated. Chair Atkins seems to think that if investors get cheated, they should just suck it up. The Trump SEC has made it easier for executives to silence shareholders and to ignore suggestions for improving corporate governance. And perhaps most dangerous of all, the Trump SEC has gutted oversight and enforcement tools, even proposing to dismantle the database that helps the SEC catch insider trading, market manipulation, and other corporate crime. And the proof that the SEC has largely quit enforcing the law, right there in the numbers. Over the past year, the SEC collected less in monetary penalties against bad actors than it has in over a decade. And I don't think anyone can say with a straight face that's because corporate CEOs are suddenly behaving better. For crooked CEOs and companies built on fraud, Trump's SEC is a dream come true. Atkins has taken the SEC cops off the beat. And under his watch, the SEC has cut way back on investigating companies that break the law and hurt investors. So who benefits from the Trump administration sidelining the cops at the SEC? President Trump and his billionaire buddies. Rich CEOs like Trevor Milton and companies like Kraken, Coinbase, and Gemini, who donated big time to Trump, and then the SEC cases against them, suddenly disappeared. While the SEC spends its time handing out special favors, risk is building up in our financial system. And we have seen this movie before. In fact, the SEC chair who sits here today played a starring role in an earlier financial crash. In the years leading up to the 2008 crash, Chair Atkins, who was then a commissioner on the SEC, along with other regulators, let companies flood the market with complex, risky financial products. Taxpayers ended up bailing out Wall Street, while millions of people on Main Street lost their jobs, their homes, and their pensions. And here we are, 20 years after the crash, and the lesson for Republicans seems to be that so long as you take care of the big boys, Donald Trump and his friends are happy and no further investigation is needed. Once again, American families are being put at risk of losing their shirts because Trump's SEC refuses to do its job and enforce our laws. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.