Committee hearing spotlights bill to broaden accredited-investor rules to spur listings

An unidentified member of the House Financial Services Committee urged support for the Invest Act, saying it would change who qualifies as an "accredited investor" and make it easier for startups to raise private capital and ultimately go public. "So tonight, we do something about that. We make it easier to be a public company in America," the speaker said during opening remarks.

The speaker framed the bill as the product of more than a decade of bipartisan effort to promote economic growth and reduce the cost of raising capital for small businesses. He said he had asked colleagues about the number of companies in the Wilshire 5,000 index and reported that the number was "3,700," using that figure to argue the country lacks enough qualified public companies.

The testimony focused on private placements governed by Regulation D of the Securities and Exchange Commission. The speaker described current accredited-investor thresholds as wealth-based requirements — citing a $1,000,000 net-worth test and a $250,000 income test as the standards discussed in the transcript — and said those rules can exclude founders and technical inventors from investing in businesses they help create. "But what if you invented the technology that's doing the business? But you did not have [the] $1,000,000 net worth and a $250,000 income... Mister chairman, you can't be an investor," he said.

Describing the bill's central fix, the speaker said: "It says if you have an expertise in a particular area you can become an accredited investor." He framed that change as widening opportunities for entrepreneurs and individual investors to participate earlier in company funding and cited the goal of enabling Americans "no matter what side of the tracks you grow up on" to benefit from investment and entrepreneurship.

The speaker identified the measure as the Invest Act and named Miss Wagner, Mister Godheimer and Mister Meeks as having "delivered that in the Invest Act," then urged committee members to vote yes before yielding back time. The transcript does not record a committee vote or a motion on the floor during the remarks.

The hearing offered no additional sponsors' text, cost estimates, or legal language in the transcript; those details were not specified. The committee record in this excerpt is limited to the speaker's explanation and request for support; any next procedural steps (such as a markup, amendment, or formal vote) were not recorded in the provided segments.