US lawmaker proposes to cut SEC Chair Gary Gensler’s salary to $1

A United States lawmaker wants to strip Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler of his salary by paying him just $1 per year.

In a proposed amendment to the Financial Services and General Government (FSGG), Representative Tim Burchett suggested that Gensler’s salary be brought down to $1 as part of a wider proposal to defund the regulator.

First introduced on July 13 this year, the FSGG bill is a wide-ranging piece of legislation that aims to significantly reduce government spending across the board.

*Burchett’s proposed amendment to the FSGG bill. Source: House Committee on Appropriations*

It’s estimated that Gensler earns north of $300,000 per year for his duties as head of the SEC.

Burchett wasn’t the only lawmaker taking aim at the SEC, with the overall bill aimed at drastically cutting funding to a number of government agencies.

While introducing the bill to the House Rules Committee on Nov. 6, Representative Steve Womack outlined that the SEC, among other agencies, had fallen prey to regulatory overreach and was becoming an undue financial burden on the government.

Womack said that the best course of action would be to defund the SEC to help limit its regulatory “intrusiveness” while forcing the regulator to return focus to its core mission.

“Specifically, we turn off rulemakings at the Securities and Exchange Commission that lack proper cost-benefit analysis and aggregate impact analysis.”

“To be clear, the agencies under our jurisdiction perform important functions; however, many have strayed from their mandate and the results have been a true disservice to the American people,” Womack added.

We are on an unsustainable trajectory.

My bill reins in wasteful Washington spending to address our dire fiscal situation. https://t.co/lWgyvHknQQ

— Rep. Steve Womack (@rep_stevewomack) November 6, 2023

This isn’t the first time that Gensler and his agency have come under fire from U.S. politicians.

On June 12, U.S. Representatives Warren Davidson and Tom Emmer introduced the SEC Stabilization Act to the House of Representatives, with one of the bill’s primary provisions being one that would remove Gensler as chair of the SEC.

If passed, the bill would fire Gensler and redistribute the power of the agency between the SEC’s chair and commissioners. It would also create an executive director position and add a sixth commissioner to the agency to prevent any one political party from holding a majority sway.

Davidson and Emmer have long been vocal critics of the Gensler-led SEC, with Emmer slamming Gensler as a “bad faith regulator” and accusing him of “blindly spraying the crypto community with enforcement actions while completely missing the truly bad actors.”