Audit? What Audit? Trump’s Plan to Nuke the PCAOB
By Justin Jest
Filed from beneath the rubble of financial accountability
WASHINGTON, D.C. — In a bold attempt to make America’s financial markets just as volatile as its political system, Republican lawmakers are now aiming their legislative wrecking ball at the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board—the watchdog born from the flaming carcass of Enron. Their proposal? Abolish the PCAOB, fold its responsibilities into the SEC, and hope nobody remembers how we got here.
The PCAOB was created in 2001 when a little company named Enron taught America what happens when auditors act like cheerleaders instead of referees. But under President Trump’s second-term deregulatory scorched-earth crusade, that history lesson is headed for the shredder. The move comes courtesy of House Republicans, who’ve buried the plan in a massive tax and spending package with all the subtlety of dynamite in a birthday cake.
Here’s the pitch: cut the levy that funds the PCAOB, kill the agency, and transfer the job of audit inspections to the SEC. Never mind that the PCAOB was specifically created to be independent from the very Wall Street interests it inspects. Never mind that this “reform” guts the exact standards that Chair Erica Williams has enforced with record fines and stronger oversight. The message from Trumpworld is clear: we don’t like regulators who regulate.
Audit firms, it turns out, aren’t all on board with this latest act of financial arson. The Center for Audit Quality—aka the trade group for the titans of ticking boxes—has been grumbling about the PCAOB’s stricter tone, but even they haven’t called for its elimination. Their CEO, Julie Bell Lindsay, delivered the most diplomatic middle finger in Washington: “Oversight models may evolve,” she said, “but what shouldn’t change is accountability to capital markets.” Translation: we like fewer rules, not no rules.
And then there’s the workers. PCAOB staff might be offered jobs at the SEC—with lower pay, fewer protections, and the kind of morale normally found on a sinking cruise ship. SEC Commissioner Christina Ho, no fan of PCAOB’s current leadership, brushed off concerns, claiming the SEC “does fine attracting talent.” Which is true, if your definition of “fine” includes dismantling regulatory firewalls mid-mission.
Of course, this isn’t just about audits. The bill also targets leftover green energy funds and takes a whack at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau—because nothing says fiscal responsibility like gutting agencies that actually watch where the money’s going.
The CFA Institute—those boring people who quietly make sure capitalism doesn’t eat itself—called the plan out for what it is: a threat to market stability. “Strong, apolitical, independent audit oversight,” they warned, “is not optional if we care about capital formation.” But Trump and his allies aren’t building capital. They’re building bonfires.
And so, the PCAOB—one of the few agencies that can still say “no” to Wall Street—is now just another casualty in a deregulatory war dressed up as budget reform. If the bill passes, it won’t just be accountants left scrambling. It’ll be anyone with a retirement account, a public company stake, or a lingering memory of what happened the last time we let the fox manage the henhouse.
This has been a dispatch from the double-barreled absurdity of Trump’s America—where regulations are for suckers, memory is a liability, and accountability is just another line item to cut.
Justin Jest
Wartime Correspondent to the Fall of Financial Reality
Journalism’s Last Wild Card
Still banned from the Deloitte holiday party, and proud of it.
