Following the Republicans takeover of the U.S. Senate in Tuesday's national elections, Republicans will now control both the House and the Senate for the first time since 2006. Some commentators are already speculating that this development brings with it the "first real prospect of changes" to the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which was enacted in 2010 and has been harshly criticized by many Republicans.

Changes reducing the SEC's numerous responsibilities under Dodd-Frank would presumably be quite welcome by SEC Commissioner Daniel M. Gallagher, who has been quite outspoken in his criticism of Dodd-Frank. Back in July 2014, Commissioner Gallagher said that the rulemaking responsibilities placed on the SEC by Dodd-Frank had been an “unfettered distraction.” He also called the agency's massive efforts to finish Dodd-Frank rulemaking unrelated to its core mission a “death march,” Investment Advisor Magazine reported.

In late October 2014, in a speech he delivered at the 47th Annual Securities Regulation Seminar of the Los Angeles County Bar Association, Commissioner Gallagher brought the hammer down again on the law that he called, in honor of Halloween, “Dodd-Frankenstein.”  His comments included:

Dodd-Frank has left the Commission "at a precipice, teetering on the edge of irrelevancy as we devote a wildly disproportionate amount of resources to implementing" the law's agenda.

While the Affordable Care Act may get more attention, "Dodd-Frank is just as radical, passed in a similarly hasty, sloppy process...." 

Very few of the provisions in the 2,319 pages of Dodd-Frank "have any nexus with the actual causes of the financial crisis or the SEC’s core mission."

The SEC won the Dodd-Frank “booby prize,” as Congress assigned it approximately 100 of the roughly 400 mandated rulemakings and studies to be performed by federal regulatory agencies  — "far and away the most of any of the agencies involved."  The result is that rather than "focusing on policy issues that are core to our mission, the Commission has spent much, if not most, of its time and resources for nearly half a decade shoveling manure, in some cases for no discernable purpose whatsoever."

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