Abstract: This testimony offers general observations about the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), in response to proposals to dramatically change law governing audits of public companies in the US. SOX is a disclosure law, not a command and control law. In general, disclosure laws such as SOX provide enormous benefits to the economy. Control systems long pre-dated SOX, and were not imposed by SOX. SOX never imposed a “one size fits all” rules on US businesses. The creation of the PCAOB in SOX followed from the failure of self-regulatory bodies to preserve quality audits for US public companies. The requirement that PCAOB-supervised auditors be retained by broker-dealers was a direct result of the Madoff and Stanford scandals. The PCAOB plays a particularly important role in protecting US investors in China-based companies. Evidence from research on SOX finds that it improved audit quality and public market liquidity, and that the costs it imposed fell substantially after PCAOB modified audit standards in 2007. No evidence supports SOX impeding IPOs generally.