The Securities and Exchange Commission has been captured by the companies it regulates, U.S. Senators Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Jack Reed (D-RI) told Financial Advisor on Friday.

Brown is chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Finanicial Institutions and Consumer Protection, and Reed is a member of the subcommittee. They called “regulatory capture” a problem that afflicts all federal agencies overseeing business.

Sen. Reed said the issue of financial regulators becoming too cozy with those they regulate is one the subcommittee should look at.

Their comments came after a subcommittee hearing on alleged regulatory capture at the Federal Reserve.

For years, critics have contended that staffers at federal overseers have become more protective of the companies and the workers at businesses they regulate because they have the affinity of knowledge of the same field.

The critics also say that because companies pay more than federal salaries, regulatory agency workers go out of their way to be gentle on the regulated entities in hopes of eventually leaving their current jobs for the private sector and bigger salaries.

SEC workers who leave are barred from appearing before the agency for two years on behalf of companies they directly supervised.

However, they are not prohibited from advising those companies on SEC matters and are free to appear before the regulator to help other companies in the same industry.

Regulated companies can gain a potential advantage by hiring a former SEC employee who intimately knows how the agency works and might have had personal relationships with the individuals directly responsible for their SEC matters, the senators said.