CFTC seeks bigger budget than White House proposal

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Republican-led U.S. derivatives regulatory agency is splitting with the White House over how large its fiscal 2018 budget should be, saying it needs extra funds to help carry out its mission.

In a somewhat unusual move, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission said on Tuesday it is seeking a $31.5 million boost on its current $250 million budget.

The White House, by contrast, proposed to keep the budgets of both the CFTC and the Securities and Exchange Commission flat.

The SEC's budget is $1.6 billion.

The White House also said it would support allotting an additional $244.5 million to help pay for the SEC to relocate its headquarters, though at the same time it called on Congress to kill a $50 million reserve fund that the agency taps to help fund long-term information technology projects.

The SEC did not immediately comment on whether SEC Chairman Jay Clayton feels the White House proposal is adequate.

The CFTC won broad new powers from the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law to police the massive over-the-counter derivatives marketplace.

However, it has often struggled to convince the Republican-led Congress to boost its resources.

The CFTC said Tuesday that it has independent legal authority to seek a different budget from what the White House proposes, and that its pitch to Congress was approved by its two commissioners, Republican Chairman J. Christopher Giancarlo and Democrat Sharon Bowen.

The money would be used to devote more resources to analyze the economic costs and benefits of its rules, boost compliance examinations of clearing houses that help reduce counterparty trading risks, and further advance its newly unveiled financial technology initiatives.

"The U.S. derivatives markets should be neither the most regulated nor the least regulated of the world - but the best regulated," Giancarlo wrote in a letter to congressional appropriators.

"This budget request ensures that the CFTC can meet such a standard before the American people."

(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; Editing by Paul Simao and Grant McCool)