Regulators may be moving too fast for their own good on Dodd-Frank, GOP says

The breakneck pace of rulemaking to implement the Dodd-Frank financial reform law is squeezing out public comments and could result in inconsistent regulations, House Republicans warned Wednesday.

In a letter sent to top federal regulators, including Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, the GOP members also cautioned that the rapidly approaching deadlines is a burden on the regulators themselves, making it difficult to avoid conflicting rules between agencies.

The letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Hill, is expected to be signed by Reps. Scott Garrett (R-N.J.), Randy Neugebauer (R-Texas), Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) and House Financial Services Committee Chairman Spencer Bachus (R-Ala).

Specifically, they warned that since the "avalanche" of new rules will have major effects on businesses and consumers, regulators should be sure to weigh their input before finalizing any proposed rules. However, the sheer amount of rules will make it difficult for affected parties to weigh in on all of them, and for the regulators to read and consider them all.

"Businesses and consumers wishing to provide thoughtful input on proposed regulations are stymied by the sheer number of proposed rules in the pipeline, the diverse array of issue areas addressed by the proposed rules and the truncated comment periods," they wrote. "The quality of final rules suffers when insight from entities which will be most impacted by those rules is not available."

While an executive order signed by President Obama in January recommended regulatory comment periods last at least 60 days, the lawmakers said the average comment period for Dodd-Frank rules ranges from 30 to 45 days.

The Republicans also warned that the rapid pace of rulemaking could be preventing regulators from appropriately weighing the impact of the rules on small businesses.

Since Dodd-Frank was signed into law in July, regulators have been scrambling to draft and finalize rules implementing a large number of provisions. While there are various deadlines for various regulatory projects, generally the bulk of the implementation work needs to be finished one year after the act was signed into law.

Further complicating matters is the fact that regulators like the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Commodity Futures Trading Commision (CFTC) have thus far been rebutted in their attemps to obtain larger budgets to accommodate the bigger workload. The Obama administration requested hundreds of millions of dollars for both agencies in his fiscal 2012 budget request, but fiscally conservative Republicans have been reluctant to authorize bigger budgets.