Reed: Budget deal must include funds for SEC, CFTC

How much money should be spent on those two agencies has been the subject of heated political debate since the 112th Congress began. 

Thanks to a budget standoff in the lame-duck session of the last Congress, those regulators are still functioning at 2010 funding levels, even as their workload has dramatically increased because of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law. The heads of both agencies have repeatedly said their insufficient budgets are making it difficult to implement the Wall Street overhaul, and may make it impossible to enforce it once it is implemented.

Democratic lawmakers and the White House have pushed for major boosts to both agencies’ budgets, calling for hundreds of millions of dollars more in funding.

But House Republicans, who unanimously opposed the law, have taken over that chamber, and instead are pushing for cuts to the watchdogs’ budgets, citing their inability to prevent the underpinnings of the financial crisis or sniff out widespread fraud like that committed by Bernie Madoff.