On June 4, 2025, forty-six signatories, including, among others, former PCAOB board members and academics, wrote to the Chairmen and Ranking Members of the U.S. Senate Committees on the Budget and Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, asserting that Section 50002 of the Concurrent Budget Resolution, which proposes to eliminate the PCAOB, violates the Byrd Rule criteria for inclusion in a reconciliation bill. The Byrd Rule requires that reconciliation bills focus on fiscal, not non-budgetary policy, issues. (We previously reported on the proposed legislation in the May 2 and May 23, 2025 Auditor Liability Bulletins.)   

The letter outlines five reasons why the signatories believe eliminating the PCAOB through budget reconciliation violates the Byrd Rule: (1) the PCAOB is not funded through the federal budget; (2) the proposal would not result in a significant reduction to the federal deficit; (3) the Sarbanes-Oxley Act was passed through regular Senate procedure and, thus, legislation to eliminate the PCAOB should be done by regular Senate procedure, and not through budget reconciliation; (4) the non-budgetary consequences of eliminating the PCAOB, including harm to investors, are substantial; and (5) the proposal targets the PCAOB for political and ideological reasons, and is not motivated purely by fiscal considerations. The letter closes by urging the Chairmen and Ranking Members to remove the proposal to eliminate the PCAOB from the Current Resolution on the Budget for Fiscal Year 2025. 

A copy of the letter is attached here.