WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., on Friday criticized a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission proposal in Washington that he said would drastically scale back disclosure of executive pay at most public companies. He accused the Trump administration of trying to undermine transparency.

Under the proposal, as Reed's office described it, typically only chief executives and chief financial officers would be required to disclose their pay packages, and they would report less information to investors. The office said the threshold for reporting perks, which can include private jet travel, would rise from $10,000 to $150,000, and the rule would add a new "de minimis tracking exclusion."

Reed's office also said companies would be given leeway to "artificially lower" the ratio of CEO pay to median worker pay, so that large pay packages for chief executives would appear far less disproportionate.

The office said the plan follows a related SEC proposal in May that it said would exempt about 80 percent of public companies from the full set of executive compensation disclosures.

Reed, a member of the Senate Banking Committee, called the proposal the kind of "rigging the economy" that he said voters had rejected, and said the agency that oversees Wall Street should protect investors through strong, uniform reporting requirements.

"I believe investors deserve more transparency into how corporations pay their executives, not less," Reed said in a statement. "Rather than protect ordinary Americans and workers saving for retirement, the SEC is proposing to coddle corporate management and insiders."

He argued that without transparency, "we will see even more exorbitant pay packages for executives while wages for workers will continue to stagnate," and said he hopes the SEC withdraws what he called "this misguided proposal."

The statement did not include a response from the SEC or the White House.

This brief was drafted by AI from a public agency or political press release and published by The New England Signal. Why we use AI for stories like this one.