The Senate’s first crack at the SEC budget for 2017 gives the agency the same amount it received this year: $1.6 billion.
The figure approved by the Senate Appropriations Committee’s Financial Services Subcommittee Wednesday is $50 million more than what the House Appropriations Committee approved last week and $176 million less than what President Obama sought.
Much of the Obama increase was allocated for adding examiners to raise the Securities and Exchange Commission’s annual examination rate for investment advisers above 10 percent.
Financial Services Subcommittee Chair John Boozman, R-Ark., said he will meet with his counterpart in the House, Ander Crenshaw, to iron out differences. He said the two are very far apart on several financial services spending items for the federal fiscal year starting October 1.
Boozman said his subcommittee’s appropriation provides sufficient funding for the securities regulator.
The only controversial restriction on the SEC in the 2017 budget bill, according to Boozman and the subcommittee’s lead Democrat, Chris Coons, is a continuation of last year’s prohibition on the SEC’s adoption of mandatory campaign funding disclosures by public companies.
The full Senate Appropriations Committee votes on the SEC budget Thursday.