In Case You Missed It: Treasury Says GOP Cuts Would Undermine Wall Street Reform

WASHINGTON, DC—A document released this week by the United States Treasury titled “Penny Wise and Pound Foolish: Cutting Wall Street Reform” points out that cuts proposed by the House Majority to the Treasury’s main financial oversight agencies “would undermine the enforcement of Wall Street reform.” The House Appropriations Committee Majority has proposed legislation that would cut 12 percent from the President’s budget request for the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and 41 percent from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).

“The deep cuts proposed by the House Majority are, in this case, potentially dangerous,” Congressman Jim Himes (CT-4) said. “After one of the worst financial crises in a generation, Republicans are doing everything they can to gut enforcement of the rules of the road that will end the unregulated trading and rein in the irresponsible risk-taking that helped cause the collapse of 2008.”

The piece explains that the SEC is responsible for protecting over 90 million investors who own mutual funds and helps regulate the more than $50 trillion U.S. market in stocks and bonds. The CFTC oversees the U.S. derivatives market, which includes $300 trillion in swaps and $40 trillion in futures.

Other key points from the document include:

• The proposed cuts “are equivalent to the funding of about 1,600 workers at the agencies.”
• The cuts are “in spite of the fact that the SEC pays for itself, largely through fees on trading volumes.”
• The cuts are “less than .002 percent of the total household wealth lost during the financial crisis.”

Read the complete piece here.