The House Appropriations Committee has delayed for one week voting on its short-term continuing resolution, which would fund the government until Dec. 11 and keep the Securities and Exchange Commission’s funding at its current level.
House Appropriations Chairman Harold Rogers said in published reports that he hoped the vote on the bill, which would keep the SEC’s budget at $1.35 billion, would be held in “one week.” The delay in the vote, which was scheduled for Thursday, will give members of Congress time to agree on whether to include the Obama administration-requested language in the bill to aid Syrian rebels against terrorist insurgents operating under the name of Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
House Republican leaders have signaled their willingness to back President Barack Obama’s request.
But SEC Chairwoman Mary Jo White told members of the Senate Banking Committee in her prepared remarks Monday that the House budget would not be sufficient to address “the immediate and pressing need for significant resources” to boost advisor exams.
She reiterated the SEC’s 9% RIA exam rate in fiscal 2013, noting again that in 2004 the SEC had 19 examiners per trillion dollars in investment advisor assets under management while today the agency has only eight. “Additional resources are vital to increase exam coverage over investment advisors and other key areas, and also to bolster our core investigative, litigation, and analytical enforcement functions,” White said in her remarks.