Mr. DeFAZIO. I rise in support of the bill, and I'm very favorable to the say-on-pay provision. I'm going to propose that we actually add to that provision, but first, I've been a bit bemused by the debate today and listening from my office to hear from the Republican side that they're saying, well, it's the Democrats' fault that there aren't more meaningful restrictions, but we're against these meaningful restrictions. So I'm going to give them a chance here to maybe be a little more consistent because I'm going to offer a free-market approach to enhancing protections for stockholders and taxpayers against excessive corporate executive remuneration. It's a free-market approach, and it's also a democratic approach because it would allow the owners of the company, the stockholders, to cast not just an advisory vote but a binding vote on corporate compensation.
Now, I know we're going to hear concerns about this, and perhaps again they will be extraordinarily inconsistent on their side of the aisle, bemoaning the fact that we didn't do this earlier but not wanting to do it now in a more meaningful way.
But the issue here is very real. The growth in corporate compensation has been extraordinary. We've gone from a 40:1 ratio to the average worker 25 years ago to nearly 400:1 in many cases now, and Americans are justifiably outraged, and they're particularly outraged when it's sometimes now their taxpayer money which is going to support these lavish lifestyles.
We have examples of some corporations that have recently gone to binding votes. NBIA after a rather disastrous year has gone there. You can expect that their stockholders are going to be a little cranky about the corporate compensation. Carl Icahn supports this provision. And the Netherlands has adopted this. In the Netherlands, the way it works is it's prospective. The next year's salary package has to be approved by the stockholders in a vote.
Now, the bill does refer, the provision regarding say-on-pay, to the SEC, and I would leave that intact so it would be up to the SEC to figure out how this might work. Perhaps there's already an egregious pay package in effect and voting against a prospective package wouldn't even get at the underlying--I can understand that some people would say that this needs a little work, but I trust the SEC to get there.
