Increasing Investor Opportunities Act

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. HILL of Arkansas. Mr. Chairman, I thank Mrs. Wagner for her work as our subcommittee chair of Capital Markets in this Congress. I thank our vice chairman of the full committee that you will hear from tonight, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Huizenga) who for three Congresses served as chair of Capital Markets or ranking member on this subcommittee.

This work tonight represents over a decade of effort on a bipartisan basis, both sides of the aisle, to advance economic growth for our citizens, and for our businesses by advancing their ability--at a lower cost, in a more effective way--of raising money from working out of their garage and crowdsourcing their idea to bring their idea to life, through angel investing all the way through to lowering the cost to be a public company.

Mr. Chairman, exactly 1 year ago this week, when I aspired to serve as chair of the House Financial Services Committee, I asked my colleagues: Can you tell me how many companies are in the Wilshire 5000 Index? There was silence in the room.

Mr. Chairman, there was silence in the room because it is not 5,000 companies, it was 3,700. Why? It is because we don't have enough qualified public companies in this great Nation--the largest economy in the world--to have 5,000 public companies in the Wilshire 5000.

Tonight we do something about that. We make it easier to be a public company in America. We make it easier if you have a great idea to crowdsource that idea, raise money from friends and family, and we make it easier if you are an individual investor to have other opportunities in which to invest.

Before I served in this House, I conducted many private placements to help people start their own business, and Reg D of the SEC is what you do that under. Those are the rules of the SEC to privately raise money to help somebody start a business.

In that effort, you have to be an accredited investor in order to invest. What if you invented the technology that is doing the business, but you did not have a million-dollar net worth and a $250,000 income? Mr. Chairman, you can't be an investor--it is your technology--unless you are the CEO or a board member.

This bill corrects that. It says if you have an expertise in a particular area, you can become an accredited investor.

Tonight, Mr. Chair, we believe in Steve Case's admonition to the whole Nation, ``The Rise of the Rest.'' We want America to thrive no matter what side of the tracks you grow up on or what your education level is. We want hard work, savings, and investment rewarded.

Mrs. Wagner, Mr. Gottheimer, and Mr. Meeks have delivered that in the INVEST Act, and I urge a ``yes'' vote.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source