President Joe Biden signed into law a solution to ensure the Commodity Futures Trading Commission can continue important transparency and outreach functions of its work. The CFTC Fund Management Act (S. 409) carries no cost to taxpayers and fixes an expected shortfall in the fund that would have rendered the agency unable to staff its whistleblower and customer education and outreach offices.

Senate Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., and Ranking Member John Boozman, R-Ark., worked with Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, in introducing the bill. Upon becoming law, it immediately shifts $10 million from the CFTC Customer Protection Fund into a separate, newly created account that would be used to pay for salaries, expenses and customer education activities. This will ensure that the CFTC’s whistleblower program can continue to function even when awards obligated to whistleblowers exceed the program fund’s balance at the time of distribution.

The CFTC would be able to obligate funds from the new account only when the unobligated balance of the CFTC Customer Protection Fund is insufficient to pay non-award expenses. This new account will sunset on October 1, 2022, and any remaining balance will be returned to the CFTC Customer Protection Fund.

“The CFTC’s Office of the Whistleblower is vital to our efforts to uncover and enforce violations of the Commodity Exchange Act. If it were unable to function, our ability to hold violators accountable would be significantly diminished. By addressing the office’s funding shortfall, we can ensure it will be able to continue to process awards for the brave men and women who shed light on violations. I appreciate Senator Grassley’s leadership on this legislation and the issue of whistleblower protection as a whole, as well as his willingness to work with Chairwoman Stabenow and myself to resolve this issue,” Boozman says.

“I’m pleased President Biden signed this important fix into law,” adds Stabenow. “By separating the money used for salaries and expenses from the funds used for whistleblower awards, Congress ensures that the CFTC Whistleblower Office and the Office of Customer Education and Outreach can continue their important roles while we work toward reauthorization of the Commodity Exchange Act.”  

The CFTC is the agency responsible for regulating commodity markets - markets used by farmers and ranchers, as well as small business and global firms. Futures contracts for agricultural commodities have been traded in the United States for more than 150 years and have been under federal regulation since the 1920s. When the CFTC was created in 1974 with the enactment of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission Act, most futures trading took place in the agricultural sector.