Today, Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA), the top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, released this statement following the Securities and Exchange Commission’s announcement that it will move to further limit the voices of shareholders.

“I am deeply disappointed by the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) announcement this week that the SEC will no longer do its job to hold companies accountable when they disqualify shareholder proposals. Let me be clear: this decision will embolden corporate executives to throw shareholder proposals in the trash, effectively disenfranchising and silencing shareholders. This dangerous and undemocratic move opens the door to more abuse, more risk for workers and retirees, and less accountability for public companies.

For decades, shareholder proposals have been one of the few tools that give working families and long-term investors influence over how corporate America behaves. Through this process, investors have pushed companies to clean up pollution in our communities, address gender and racial pay gaps, curb sexual harassment, rein in runaway executive pay, protect workers’ health and safety, raise wages, and confront human rights and environmental abuses in their company’s supply chains. That’s what shareholder democracy looks like in practice: people, whose retirement savings and hard-earned dollars are on the line, insisting that the companies they own act responsibly.

I'm calling on Chairman Atkins to withdraw this decision immediately and do the job he was assigned. The agency that calls itself the ‘Investor’s Advocate’ should not be in the business of rubber-stamping corporate executives’ attempts to silence investors, or arbitrarily rewriting decades of precedent.”

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