Roll Back Esg to Increase Retirement Earnings Act

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MAGAZINER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from North Carolina for yielding.

I rise in opposition to H.R. 5339, a misguided bill that will hurt the retirement savings of millions of hardworking Americans.

The evidence is clear. Companies that adopt thoughtful policies to manage their environmental risks, their social risks, and have sound corporate governance policies outperform those that don't.

As a former State treasurer and an investor in the private sector, I can tell you that companies that take steps to mitigate their environmental footprint to do right by their customers, to do right by their employees, and to promote corporate diversity tend to outperform their peers. Any investor who knows what they are doing would be foolish to ignore those factors.

Even if you disagree with me, even if you don't think that those factors matter in company performance, you ought to believe that in a free market, investors should have the right to consider whatever factors they believe are relevant to performance without Congress getting in the way.

Why is the Republican majority, which claims to be the party of small government, so obsessed with walking away from free markets and taking away Americans' freedoms?

This is yet another example of this trend.

House Republicans want to tell you what books you can and can't get from the library, who you are and aren't allowed to marry, what reproductive healthcare decisions women have the right to make, and now they want to try to make it illegal for investors to even think about a company's environmental or social performance when doing their jobs.

The people who are going to get hurt are the American workers whose retirement savings will take a hit if this bill takes effect.

By the way, no one is asking for this bill. There are no constituents back home who are saying, you know, the biggest problem in our country today is ESG investing.

How about my Republican colleagues do their job, focus on keeping the government funded and open, and not take away the freedom of investors to do their jobs the way they see fit?

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source