Sponsors (2)
The bill aims to improve the quality and market‑sensitivity of Commission rulemaking by adding dedicated economic analysis, liquidity considerations, and faster economist hiring, but it does so at the cost of reduced competitive hiring safeguards, potential centralization and bias of analysis, and added procedural burdens that may slow or complicate regulation.
Financial market participants and investors will face rulemaking that explicitly weighs market liquidity, helping preserve market functioning and protect investors from rules that would unduly reduce liquidity.
Rules under the Commission's oversight will receive dedicated economic analysis and cost–benefit study, improving rule quality and potentially reducing harmful or unnecessary regulatory burdens on market participants.
The Commission can hire specialized economists faster via excepted‑service appointment authority, increasing analytical capacity and enabling more timely, technically informed rulemaking.
Waiving competitive‑service hiring procedures for economist appointments reduces transparency and merit‑based hiring safeguards, raising risks of politicized or lower‑quality appointments that affect taxpayer trust in the agency.
Stronger economic review requirements could slow agency rulemaking and add compliance costs, imposing delays and additional burdens on financial institutions and potentially on consumers.
Concentrating analytical authority in a single office risks biased cost–benefit outcomes if internal oversight is limited, which could skew rule directions and reduce the objectivity of regulatory decisions.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Creates a statutory Office of the Chief Economist at the CFTC, authorizes hiring procedures for its staff, and requires the Commission to consider market liquidity and all markets under its jurisdiction in cost‑benefit analyses.
Official title: To create an Office of the Chief Economist at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
Introduced February 11, 2026 by Robert P. Bresnahan · Last progress February 11, 2026
Creates an Office of the Chief Economist inside the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and makes targeted clarifying changes to the CFTC’s rulemaking cost‑benefit statute. The new office, led by a Chief Economist, will provide economic analysis, regulatory cost‑benefit analysis, and research for Commission decisionmaking and may hire professional staff under excepted‑service appointment procedures (while those positions legally remain in the competitive service). The bill also broadens the statutory language the Commission must consider when weighing costs and benefits by replacing “futures markets” with “markets under the jurisdiction of the Commission” and explicitly adding “considerations of market liquidity.”