Bill Posey: SEC Needs to Focus on Fraud, Not Climate Change

On Wednesday, Florida Republican U.S. Rep. Bill Posey teamed up with U.S. Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., to introduce a measure looking to prevent the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) from forcing companies to reveal how climate change affects their organizations. The SEC enacted that requirement in January 2010.

Arguing that the SEC needs to focus on other priorities, Posey and Barrasso hammered that point when they named the bill -- the Maintaining Agency Direction on Financial Fraud Act, or MADOFF Act --after the disgraced investor.

I think the SEC has its priorities wrong, said Posey on Wednesday. We know the SEC was given all of the evidence on Bernard Madoffs $65 billion Ponzi scheme in 1999 and they failed to act. Many institutional investors spurned Madoff in the early 1990s due to discrepancies. Why didnt the SEC catch on to his scheme? Instead of enforcing climate change policies, the SEC might want to focus its attention on protecting investors from fraud and abuse in the financial markets. With so much capital investment at stake every day, we cant afford another Madoff scandal because the SEC was distracted by other issues such as climate change.

In this economy, the SECs main responsibility should be to protect American investors and maintain fair markets, said Barrasso. Instead, its actually using time and resources on regulating climate change. This is yet another startling example of how the administration is making it worse for job creators across our country. Our bill blocks the SEC from forcing American employers to conduct burdensome and expensive climate analysis.