The House-Senate budget agreement reached Monday gives a boost to the Securities and Exchange Commission unit charged with giving cost-benefit justifications, but provides no money for new investment advisor examiners.

The agreement gives the SEC about the same amount of money -- $1.35 billion -- for the federal spending cycle ending September 30 that it received the previous year.

Meanwhile, the SEC’s Division of Economic and Risk Analysis was the only SEC division mentioned in the legislation. The SEC was told to spend at least $44.35 million on the unit's activities, nearly a one-third increase over its budget the year before and a figure equal to what the Obama Administration asked for. In contrast, the appropriators ignored the President’s request for the funds for 250 additional investment advisor examiners.

Congressional Republicans and the financial services industry have been beating the drum for SEC cost-benefit analysis for years, seeing the tactic as a way of weakening regulation.

They were given a shot in the arm by a Washington, D.C., federal Circuit Court of Appeals decision voiding on cost-benefit grounds the agency’s plan to give long-term investors the ability to nominate members to corporate boards of directors -- the so-called “proxy access rule.”

Opponents of cost-benefit analysis at the SEC have argued it is impossible to know the dollar value of fraud prevented over time by a new rule, while proponents claim the amount of jobs and other economic activity thwarted by a new regulation is also unpredictable.