The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission doesn’t have the budget to enforce new derivatives regulations required under the Dodd-Frank Act, CFTC Chairman Gary Gensler told lawmakers.
“We don’t have the budget, the resources to oversee,” Gensler said today at a House Agriculture Committee hearing on implementation of the regulatory overhaul. The agency may finish writing rules by mid-July and needs a budget increase to hire additional employees and improve technology to enforce standards for banks, hedge funds and large swap users, he said.
The CFTC and Securities and Exchange Commission are leading efforts to write new regulations after largely unregulated trades helped fuel the 2008 credit crisis. Gensler’s request for a budget increase to $261 million from $169 million for the current fiscal year is being held up by a congressional stalemate over federal spending.
“A dramatic increase to fund the SEC and CFTC, as envisioned by the authors of the Dodd-Frank legislation, would further the mindset that our nation’s problems can be solved with more spending,” Representative Scott Garrett, a New Jersey Republican who leads a Financial Services panel that oversees the two agencies, said in a Jan. 25 statement.
President Barack Obama is set to release the fiscal 2012 budget request on Feb. 14.
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