By Douglas Gillison
WASHINGTON, Feb 12 (Reuters) – Wall Street’s top regulator is working to restore some of its workforce following last year’s deep cuts at the behest of the White House, the agency’s chief told Congress on Thursday.
“We have gaps in different divisions, so we will fill that,” Paul Atkins, chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, said during Senate testimony.
He also rejected charges by Democratic lawmakers that the agency had dropped enforcement actions against crypto companies and entrepreneurs with ties to President Donald Trump.
After taking office last year, Trump called for “large-scale” workforce cuts across the federal government as part of the Department of Government Efficiency initiative with former adviser Elon Musk. The SEC offered several rounds of buyouts, resulting in a staff exodus that, as of a year ago, had depleted some key agency components by nearly 20%, causing critics to say this could hamper the SEC’s ability to police markets and respond to crises.
“A lot of these people left voluntarily or through buyouts before I arrived at the SEC, so I’m looking at our numbers of employees, and I think we have a very good group of people in enforcement,” Atkins said.
SEC HAS OFFERED MORE VOLUNTARY REDUCTIONS
Before Atkins arrived at the agency, the SEC argued to the White House that the voluntary cuts lessened the need for dismissing staff en masse, as the administration had done at other agencies, according to a memo obtained by Reuters.
The agency since then has offered more voluntary workforce reductions and the Trump administration has placed limits on agencies’ ability to rehire after staffing cuts.
Democrats and other critics have accused the SEC of dropping enforcement actions as a political favor to crypto companies that have made political donations favoring Trump, himself an entrepreneur in the industry.
Atkins briefly acknowledged the SEC’s actions could be limited in cases in which the president had granted pardons.
“If the president has pardoned someone or given clemency, then it becomes very difficult,” he said.
He rejected accusations of undue political influence, adding that the decision to drop cases had been made by the agency’s acting chair before Atkins’ swearing-in and mostly concerned matters of failing to register securities with the commission, which he said policymakers viewed as “regulation through enforcement.”
(Reporting by Douglas Gillison in WashingtonEditing by Rod Nickel.)
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