President Obama's fiscal 2012 budget request proposes a $78.5 million increase for a number of programs related to his national export initiative (NEI) and an additional $3.4 million for the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.
Commerce Department officials say the department faced difficult choices in reducing its discretionary budget to $8.8 billion — $5.1 billion less than 2010 enacted levels — but nonetheless sought to bolster investments that would enable the United States to out-educate and out-innovate global competitors. The FY 2012 request for $8.8 billion was $242 million less than the FY 2011 budget request of $8.9 billion.
President Obama, in his 2010 State of the Union address, set the NEI goal of doubling U.S. exports in five years.
The president's request includes $309 million for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which would be an 82 percent increase. The $309 million request would fund increases in nearly a dozen agency programs and activities and also enable the agency to hire 378 new full-time employees.
CFTC currently is receiving $169 million under a continuing resolution — the same amount that the agency was funded at for FY 2010. Last year, the White House requested $261 million for the commission for FY 2011. The House and Senate appropriations committees eventually approved $286 million, but a final budget for the government never was finalized.
The White House said that the FY 2012 funding request for CFTC actually is part of a two-year plan that would see the request increase to an estimated $340 million in FY 2013.
