The U.S. Chamber of Commerce appreciates the House Financial Services Committee convening a hearing that features testimony from the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) Chair, Gary Gensler. The SEC’s role is central to the function of U.S. capital markets, and as such its rulemaking agenda has significant consequences. Despite this important role, this will concerningly be Chair Gensler’s first appearance before the House Financial Services Committee since October 5, 2021. Moreover, in a break from tradition, the Chair will not appear before the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee in complement to his testimony in the House, suggesting either a lack of interest in exercising oversight by Senate leadership or an aversion to testimony from the leadership at the SEC. Chair Gensler’s absence from regular testimony in both the House and Senate has been notable, especially given the agency’s expansive and unwarranted regulatory agenda under the Chair’s leadership.
The barrage of rulemaking at the SEC is unprecedented and merits the close scrutiny of Congress. Chair Gensler has identified a range of 50-55 regulatory priorities since the start of his tenure and has already proposed twice as many rules as his predecessor in just half the time. Further, this SEC has a rulemaking agenda four-times larger than each of the two years following the enactment of the Dodd-Frank Act; unlike Dodd-Frank implementation, however, the majority of this SEC’s rulemaking agenda is not mandated by Congress. The Chamber agrees that the rules governing the marketplace should be updated from time-to-time to account for market developments, but the rulemaking agenda under Chair Gensler’s leadership has been torrential, disjointed, and rushed.