No Legislative Fix for Sarbanes-Oxley in This Congress

It is becoming increasingly clear that there will be no legislative reform of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act this year. This point was driven home at a recent Financial Services Forum roundtable attended by a senior Treasury official and three members of the House Financial Services Committee. According to Rep. Joseph Crowley, the 109th Congress is not going to do anything with regard to Sarbanes-Oxley. In his view, the earliest that legislators are going to do anything is in the next Congress or the Congress after that. Despite the introduction of the Feeney-DeMint COMPETE Act to essentially reform the internal control provisions of sec. 404 of the Act, there will be no reform until after the impending retirements of Sen. Paul Sarbanes and Rep. Michael Oxley.