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April 01, 2014 at 09:06 AM
Besides calling for the repeal of Obamacare, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s 2015 budget also seeks to “tighten the belts” of government agencies, specifically the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Released Tuesday, the Wisconsin republican’s budget blueprint, which is to be marked up on Wednesday, seeks to cut spending by $5.1 trillion over the next 10 years by, among other measures, ending government ownership of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, repealing the Affordable Care Act and reforming Social Security and Medicare.
Ryan also addresses ways he’d like to revamp the tax code in the budget blueprint, which will be used as an outline of Republicans’ priorities going into the midterm election in November.
Ryan notes in his $1.014 trillion budget plan that the SEC’s budget has risen by more than 45% since fiscal 2007, and that if President Barack Obama’s fiscal year 2015 budget request of $1.7 billion for the SEC were granted, “SEC’s budget would grow by another 26% in just one fiscal year.”
As of March 2013, Ryan said, the SEC had 3,950 full-time employees and an average salary across the agency of more than $155,000.
Like other GOP lawmakers, Ryan stated that his resolution “questions the premise that more funding for the SEC means better, smarter regulation. Adding reams of regulations to the books and scores of regulators to the payrolls will not provide greater transparency, consumer protection, and enforcement for increasingly complex markets.”
He also cited the many SEC “failures” that GOP lawmakers have raised — like the agency being “missing in action” regarding the Bernie Madoff and Allen Stanford Ponzi schemes. “These failures have taken place despite significant increases in funding at the SEC, which has seen its budget increase almost 66% since 2004,” Ryan said.
But SEC Chairwoman Mary Jo White told the House Committee on Appropriations the same day Ryan’s budget was released that the funding boost the SEC is seeking under Obama’s budget “is fully justified by our growing responsibilities to investors, companies, and the markets.”
