President Barack Obama's fiscal 2017 budget proposal will be revealed on Tuesday. The president will allegedly ask the Congress to double funding for the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).
According to Bloomberg, President Obama will ask the Congress to increase the funding for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission over the next five years. This will bolster two financial regulators that the White House sees as integral to curbing Wall Street excesses.
Obama will propose the increases in the fiscal 2017 budget blueprint that he will release on Tuesday, Jeff Zients, White House National Economic Council director, wrote in a Whitehouse official blog post set to be released Monday afternoon. And by 2021 the two agencies' budgets would be twice the 2015 range, starting with an 11 percent increase for the SEC to $1.8 billion in 2017 and a 32 percent increase for the CFTC to $330 million, Zients stated.
"The president will continue working to make sure that the financial system works for everyone," Zients wrote. He added, "As the financial services industry continues to rapidly evolve, some in Congress have used budget limitations to hamper the agencies charged with establishing and enforcing the rules of the road."
The Hill claimed that just last year, Zients said that the administration fought hard to keep Congressional Republicans from using must-pass budget legislation to roll back Wall Street Reform. They had also fought to push through the increase in the funding for financial regulators and to maintain their independence.
Meanwhile, the budget increases are said to be an effort to expand regulatory gains from the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which Obama passed in 2009 in response to the financial crisis. And as the Obama administration will be pushing for more funding, Zients revealed that it will also continue to block efforts to restrict the funding independence of other financial regulators like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
