Video from markup of the Views and Estimates of the Committee on Financial Services on Matters to be Set Forth in the Concurrent Resolution on the Budget for Fiscal year 2012. Republican Congressman Scott Garrett (NJ-5th District) falsely claims that a study by the SEC requesting more funding is requesting... less funding. Watch video at http://www.sumofchange.com/article_read.ph...

Transcript: The solution to most any problem, it seems over the last four years while you were in power, is to not hold people accountable, not to make them more efficient, not to live up to the standards that Congress set for them through statute, but instead simply to do basically what the ranking member is doing today, let's give them more money. Well what the report is saying is just the opposite of that. They're saying that has been the tried and failed policies of the past: If you keep on funding the agency and not holding them accountable, that they will fail again. And that's why they failed in 2008. We on the other hand are taking the report to heart. We are reading the report and recognizing that they are setting out a whole list of parameters that must be met, a whole series of initiatives that must be taken in order to become more efficient and optimized in their operations, but before we give them more , before we allow them to have more money to spend to their various programs, we are going to hold them accountable.

The study being referred to is the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Organizational Study and Reform from March 10, 2011.

What Rep. Garrett is implying is that this study states that the SEC not only wants less funding (something so patently untrue as to make your head spin), but can get the job done without more funding by optimizing their operations. He then states that we should hold off on more funding until they do just that, because that is what the SEC says to do in the study.

In reality, the study suggests that if the SEC is not adequately meeting expectations for the agency's efficiency and effectiveness (something few people, if anyone, would argue with), there are two options for rectifying that:

• "Relax funding constraints to allow the SEC to better fulfill its current role" (in other words: more money, and they've requested an increase of $264 million for FY2012, something you can read all about in their FY2012 Congressional Justification) or
• "Change the SEC's role to fit available funding"

What does changing the SEC's role mean? Is it, as described by Rep. Garret, optimizing operations and greater efficiency? Not really. On page 150 of the study, it says:

"In the event that the funding environment does not change, an alternative option is for the SEC's role to be changed to fit the available budget. The SEC would then need to rethink what activities it should perform and delegate greater authority to SRO's than it does today. It would also need to rethink its operating model: This "new SEC" would change from being an "actor" that actively regulates markets and market participants to an "overseer" that primarily monitors the regulatory actions of others to whom it has delegated regulatory activities."

It further describes what "greater authority to SRO's" would look like on pages 151 and 152:

"Broadly, there are two ways for the SEC to think about how to increase its reliance on SRO's. First, the SEC could "functionally outsource"-that is, rely on SRO's more heavily (if not completely) for specific steps in the regulatory value chain. Second, the SEC could extend its reliance on SRO's with respect to select regulated entities (e.g., broker-dealers, investment advisers)...

No matter the constraints, however, the SEC should only approach this option incrementally, as the consequences of insufficient oversight are sever...

We do not opine on whether it is appropriate to give more or less regulatory responsibility to the SRO's, nor do we assess whether SRO's are conceptually good for the regulatory framework."

Rep. Garrett was wrong to suggest that this study lays out a framework for how to improve effectiveness without more funding. Rep Garret was remarkably wrong to suggest that the study says more funding should be withheld until certain efficiency parameters are met. And Rep. Garrett was inexplicably wrong to suggest that the study was calling for less funding (or "the opposite" of more money). In reality, the study clearly states the the only alternative to increased funding is to reduce the role of the SEC and rely more heavily on self-regulatory organizations. Because we all know that if we had only relied more heavily on SRO's, Madoff would have totally turned himself in and Wall St wouldn't have destroyed our economy!

Yes, the SEC can get by without more funding, but we should not confuse ourselves into thinking that it would mean anything but a weaker SEC that relies more heavily on companies to regulate themselves.

Watch the video at http://www.sumofchange.com/article_read.ph...

With 90 Second Summaries, we aim to cover policy items due to receive close attention in the coming weeks and months that are not being properly explained by most of the press corps. As a result, over one third of our episodes cover pieces of legislation that are receiving action or are expected to receive action during this lame duck session of Congress. We did not hit every hot topic on the board, but we got to a good number of them. Without further ado, here's a roundup of the bills we covered that you should know about as the lame duck session unfolds:

continued with videos at http://www.mainstreetinsider.org/90seconds...

Last Tuesday, election day, some voters in Maryland were listening to a robo-call telling them that "Governor O'Malley and President Obama have been successful. Our goals have been met." That evening, we received a recording of the call in question, which you can hear for yourself at http://www.sumofchange.com/article_read.ph...

It has been confirmed that the fake robo-call was the work of Republican operatives on behalf of Bob Ehrlich.

Story continued at http://www.sumofchange.com/article_read.ph...

In 1994, one of the worst atrocities of my lifetime happened while the world calmly looked the other way. For 100 days, "one group slaughtered another at the rate of 10,000 a day." It was cruel and inhuman, things beyond the nightmares of our worst horror films. When all was done, some brilliant, courageous minds called for forgiveness...

Continued with PBS video report on reconciliation at http://www.sumofchange.com/article_read.ph...

We'll be broadcasting tonight's DC for Democracy pre-endorsement candidate meet n' greet live, starting at 6:00pm (EST).

Check http://sumofchange.com/live.html for the feed. And check http://sumofchange.com/elections/2010/prim... for more info about the candidates.

CNN has a new tagline (a far more accurate tagline, if you ask me, than "America's Most Trusted Name in News"). Rick Sanchez just literally said it to me, "Since when is telling the truth news?"

read more at http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/5/21/86... (if you have a Daily Kos account, please rec, thanks)

Sometimes, Maryland is the unrecognized progressive capitol of our country. The first affordable housing laws on the books, some of the nation's best public schools, a good living wage law, and one of the first states to write legislation protecting the right to access a clinic entrance.

Earlier this year, Baltimore followed in this fine tradition, becoming the first city to mandate that crisis pregnancy centers inform women that they do not provide abortion...

continued at http://sumofchange.com/blog/2010/may/7repr...

I just finished listening to Ruth Otte of Veolia Transportation talking about real life examples of revolutionizing, from an energy standpoint, public transportation. I will run through the bullet points with you real quick.

continued at http://sumofchange.com/blog/2010/may/4gree...

Booze, strip clubs, breasts, and casinos. What do they have in common? All are billboards you will find along the Brooklyn Queens Expressway (BQE). But the an ad critical of Mayor Bloomberg's position on cannabis has been rejected.

continued at http://sumofchange.com/blog/2010/may/3cann...