Last month, I blogged that the PCAOB may be absorbed by the SEC under the budget reconciliation bill that is making its way towards the finish line. In that blog, I indicated that the only thing that might stop the merger of the agencies is if the Senate parliamentarian rules that it isn’t germane to the budget.
As noted in this press release by the Senate’s ranking Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee, that is exactly what has transpired as the PCAOB merger is among the items listed as among those that violate the Senate’s ‘Byrd’ rule. As former PCAOB Board Member Dan Goelzer notes: “That rule requires that the budget impact of reconciliation provisions must be more than merely incidental to the non-budgetary consequences.”
And as I noted in my prior blog, since the PCAOB is funded mainly by assessments paid by the largest public companies – and it doesn’t receive any taxpayer funding – there doesn’t appear to be any fiscal justification for a merger. So the PCAOB remains on its own for now. We’ll have to wait and see if there are other efforts to disband it…
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