Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2015

Floor Speech

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Ms. DeLAURO. Mr. Chairman, currently this bill mandates that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission spend $52.6 million of its already limited budget on information technology. My amendment, put forward with my colleagues Congresswoman Waters of California and Congressman Himes of Connecticut, reduces this IT set-aside back to its current level of $35 million.

Americans want to see more accountability from Wall Street and oil speculators and fewer reckless transactions, market failures, and bailouts. That is the CFTC's job, to rein in gambling with risky derivatives on Wall Street and prevent undue speculation on oil.

Republican and Democratic experts both have argued that the current funding level purposefully sets the CFTC up for failure. The current bill leaves CFTC dangerously underfunded, 22 percent below the President's request. This increased IT set-aside is equivalent to reducing their budget by another 7 percent below last year's level.

By returning this set-aside to $35 million, our amendment gives the Commission more flexibility to spend the budget they have on enforcement and examinations, to put more ``cops on the beat,'' as it were, if they see fit.

This represents neither a cut nor a rise in the current level of CFTC funding. While I think we should fund them higher, this amendment merely lets them use their budget to do their job, and they manage to do a lot, even with the limited resources we have given them.

Last year, the Commission's enforcement division brought in just over $1 billion to the Treasury. That is more than the Congress has provided the Commission in the last 5 years.

According to Acting Chairman Wetjen:

The unfortunate reality is that, at current funding levels, the Commission is unable to adequately fulfill the mission given to it by Congress.

The agency's enforcement staff is already smaller than it was in 2002, when the Commission was just responsible for the futures and options market.

Today, this smaller staff has additional important and extremely complex oversight responsibilities. They must now also oversee the $400 trillion swaps market, and they are responsible for pursuing cases against reckless, manipulative, or deceptive schemes.

We need to give the Commission the flexibility in allocating resources that it needs to do its job, to oversee risky market behaviors, protect consumers, and enforce the law. This amendment will allow them to do that, and I urge all of my colleagues to support it.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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Ms. DeLAURO. Mr. Chairman, the fact of the matter is that this amendment gives the CFTC flexibility. That is all it does. It could spend all of that money on IT. If they want to spend it on enforcement staff, they would be able to do it. This leaves them the flexibility to make the determinations based on what the needs are.

With that, I yield the balance of my time to my colleague from Connecticut (Mr. Himes).

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