Tennessee Valley Authority Salary Transparency Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. COHEN. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the chairman's remarks, and the gentleman is certainly an embodiment of the virtue of waivers.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 144, bipartisan legislation to promote additional transparency over the salary structure of the Tennessee Valley Authority, otherwise known as the TVA.

As was said, the bill passed the House last Congress on suspension by a voice vote.

The TVA is the Nation's largest government-owned wholesale power producer, supplying power to 10 million people across the States of Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, and Kentucky.

This legislation corrects a change that was enacted in 1995 that removed the requirement for TVA to disclose the management structure and salaries of its executives. Today, TVA has approximately 13,000 employees, and the median salary is $160,000. They have, in essence, 6,500 Congresspeople on salary doing TVA's work. That is absurd.

The head of the TVA, whose salary has been reported, makes $10 million a year. Mr. Lyash is a fine fellow. He is really a nice guy, and he does a good job. He was working for a Canadian firm before he got hired to run TVA, where he was making $2 million or $2.5 million. I don't know if he is four times better than he was in the state of Canada, but he is making that.

The executives, whose salaries they have to disclose, are making $2 million to $6 million each annually.

The public should know about these salaries, what they are getting, and the salaries that are spent at TVA.

Last Congress, a fair compromise was reached between our legitimate congressional oversight responsibilities over TVA and the need of TVA to retain and maintain a pool of talented, diverse, and effective management staff and executives.

This bill would help ensure that Congress has the ability to provide effective oversight of the TVA and its management and executives.

My prime cosponsor is Tim Burchett. Representative Burchett has been a friend of mine since we served in the Tennessee General Assembly together, and we raised the speed limit to 70. It had been put down to 60. It didn't hurt that Mr. Sundquist had kind of a heavy foot and helped us with that.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Burchett) for his cosponsorship. I urge passage of H.R. 144, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. COHEN. Mr. Speaker, I am still here.

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Mr. COHEN. Mr. Speaker, I will say that the bill has been well explained. It is an important and a good bill. All that Representative Burchett said about his father, Dean Burchett, a rich Tennessean, and Mrs. Burchett is true. They were wonderful people.

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