The House and Senate have moved Wednesday's vote to Thursday on a final budget agreement in the form of a Continuing Resolution (CR) that would fund the government until Sept. 30 and cuts more than $38 billion in federal spending.
However, according to the Senate Appropriations Committee, the CR would give the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) a budget boost of $74 million over its current FY2010 funding level. Under the 2011 CR, the SEC is funded at $1.185 billion, a $74 million increase over the 2010 CR that the SEC is currently operating under.
The Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) would see a $34 million budget increase.
After the Wednesday vote, the House and Senate will then move on to consider the Obama administration's Fiscal Year 2012 budget.
The budget boost for the SEC is welcome news, as the agency has been bracing for further budget cuts. However, the $90 million increase, which would raise the agency's annual budget to $1.19 billion, is still short the $1.3 billion budget that was authorized under Dodd-Frank for 2011.
SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro (left) told AdvisorOne in a recent interview that "It's hard to be too specific about how investors in the market will be most affected by cuts in our funding, because it really does depend on how deep the cuts are." The SEC, she said, "will have to make very difficult choices if the cuts are deep about what priorities we can continue to support and which of our activities, while still very important, are just ones we're not able to support without additional resources."
The House Appropriations summary of the final CR says that it will include a total of $1.049 trillion in funding, a nearly $40 billion reduction from last year's (fiscal year 2010) levels. This includes the $12 billion in reductions previously approved by Congress and signed into law under the previous three continuing resolutions, as well as nearly $28 billion in additional new spending cuts.
The funding cuts, according to the House Appropriations summary, are as follows:
Financial Services: The Financial Services and General Government section of the CR contains a total of $22 billion, a $2.4 billion, or 10%, reduction from fiscal year 2010 levels, and a reduction of $3.4 billion, or 14%, from the President's fiscal year 2011 request.
The CR reduces most Treasury and Executive Office of the President accounts and reduces funding for construction of new federal buildings by more than $800 million. The bill provides a $13 million increase over last year for the Inspector General of Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) to provide strong oversight of the billions of dollars remaining in TARP assets and continues current funding for drug task forces and programs to assist small businesses.
