Rep Garrett Says SEC Study Requesting More Money is Asking for Less Money

Video from markup of the Views and Estimates of the Committee on Financial Services on Matters to be Set Forth in the Concurrent Resolution on the Budget for Fiscal year 2012. Republican Congressman Scott Garrett (NJ-5th District) falsely claims that a study by the SEC requesting more funding is requesting... less funding.

Transcript: The solution to most any problem, it seems over the last four years while you were in power, is to not hold people accountable, not to make them more efficient, not to live up to the standards that Congress set for them through statute, but instead simply to do basically what the ranking member is doing today, let's give them more money. Well what the report is saying is just the opposite of that. They're saying that has been the tried and failed policies of the past: If you keep on funding the agency and not holding them accountable, that they will fail again. And that's why they failed in 2008. We on the other hand are taking the report to heart. We are reading the report and recognizing that they are setting out a whole list of parameters that must be met, a whole series of initiatives that must be taken in order to become more efficient and optimized in their operations, but before we give them more [inaudible], before we allow them to have more money to spend to their various programs, we are going to hold them accountable.

The study being referred to is the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Organizational Study and Reform from March 10, 2011 http://www.sec.gov/news/studies/2011/967study.pdf.

Rep. Garrett was wrong to suggest that this study lays out a framework for how to improve effectiveness without more funding. Rep Garret was remarkably wrong to suggest that the study says more funding should be withheld until certain efficiency parameters are met. And Rep. Garrett was inexplicably wrong to suggest that the study was calling for less funding (or "the opposite" of more money). In reality, the study clearly states the the only alternative to increased funding is to reduce the role of the SEC and rely more heavily on self-regulatory organizations. Because we all know that if we had only relied more heavily on SRO's, Madoff would have totally turned himself in and Wall St wouldn't have destroyed our economy!

Yes, the SEC can get by without more funding, but we should not confuse ourselves into thinking that it would mean anything but a weaker SEC that relies more heavily on companies to regulate themselves.

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News & Politics

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• Scott Garrett
• SEC
• economy
• budget
• spending