Democrats concede to curb funds for Wall Street regulators in spending bill

[Eugene]

Source: The Guardian

Democrats concede to curb funds for Wall Street regulators in spending bill

Dan Roberts in Washington
theguardian.com, Tuesday 14 January 2014 14.19 GMT

Republican negotiators have reined in funding for Wall Street regulators as part of agreeing a $1.1tn federal budget, but dropped demands for further reductions in federal food stamp programmes that would have hit America's poorest families.

The measures are among thousands of spending items contained in the so-called omnibus appropriations bill published on Monday night in a bipartisan effort to avoid another government shutdown when current authorisation expires on Friday.

The House of Representatives is due to vote on the measure on Wednesday. If passed, it would be the first time since 2011 that Congress has agreed a detailed budget and builds on negotiations by senator Patty Murray and congressman Paul Ryan before Christmas to set broad tax and spending parameters.

However, the final text, which runs to more than 1,500 pages, contains scores of politically contentious measures that may yet cause backlash among Democrats and Republicans.

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Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/14/republicans-curb-regulator-funding-bipartisan-budget

[pangaia]

1. Democrats? What Democrats.

I don't see any Democrats.

[blkmusclmachine]

3. DINOs. Every single one of those frauds.

[1StrongBlackMan]

2. This is interesting ...

This article talks about the reduced funding to the SEC;

Hal Rogers, the Republican chairman of the House appropriations committee, singled out the budget for the Securities and Exchange Commission in a press release, which received $324m less than it requested and $25m taken from reserves he called “a slush fund”.

Wall Street lobbyists have been pressing Congress to curb the growing power of regulators like the SEC in the wake of the financial crisis and Rogers said the spending bill had also designating $44m to an economic review of its rule-making process.

This decision, and similar cuts to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, brought an angry response from Wall Street campaigners.

“It is shameful that Wall Street’s allies in Congress have again failed to fund the very agencies that are charged with protecting Main Street and preventing another financial crisis,” said Dennis Kelleher, president and CEO of Better Markets, an independent nonprofit organisation that promotes the public interest in the financial markets. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/14/republicans-curb-regulator-funding-bipartisan-budget

Whereas, this article:

The Obama administration would be denied money to meet its full commitments to the International Monetary Fund but get much of the money it wanted to pay for implementation of the new health care law and the 2010 overhaul of financial regulations. http://apnews.excite.com/article/20140114/DABAFBEO2.html

Two completely different takes on what the budget does.

But a question that doesn't escape me is: "If I don't get as much as I request, is that a cut?" I guess we're gonna have to do the heavy lifting of actually reviewing the budget to really know what is going on.

Thanks media! I knew I could count on you to provide clear, definitive reporting.

[Arkana]

4. My only comfort is that I know Liz Warren and Ed Markey would have no part of this.

This is despicable. They want people to think they care about the middle class? It's shit like this that proves otherwise.