The White House’s 2017 budget calls on Congress to authorize amore than $24 million increase to the Employee Benefit SecurityAdministration’s budget.

In 2016, the EBSA is operating off a $181 million budget for 949full-time employees.

President Obama wants to see thatbumped up to $205.8 million, in part to help account for 16 newfull-time positions requested in the budget.

EBSA’s budget has held steady since 2012, when it was allocatedabout $183 million.

The largest portion of the requested budget increase will go toemployee benefits security programs. The budget proposal calls fornearly $7.6 million and seven new full-time positions tomodernizing and staffing EBSA’s “major case” initiative, which wasestablished in fiscal year 2013.

Read: EBSA restored nearly $70 million in planfunds

EBSA will “continue to invest more time and resources on majorcases that are likely to have a greater impact on participants andplans,” according to the budget proposal being sent toCongress.

Since the inception of the major case initiative, EBSA hascertified 209 major cases, resulting in more than $631 million inreturned assets to plans and participants.

The 2017 budget foresees EBSA spending 15 percent of its totalinvestigative time on major case enforcement, down from 18 percentin 2015.

That is expected to result in a 2 to 5 percent increase, or upto an $11.2 million increase in returned assets, which haveaveraged around $225 million over the past five years.

The Department of Labor’s proposed fiduciary rule is referencedas primary among EBSA’s regulatory projects, but the budget doesnot specify how much money will go to implanting and enforcing thatrule in 2017.

In 2015, EBSA processed 2,441 civil cases, and restored about$184.8 million to benefit plans via civil and criminal proceedings.Including the money restored through informal dispute resolutions,EBSA recovered a total of $660.9 million in 2015.

The budget proposal is also calling for another $2.9 million andnine new full-time employees to augment the security programs’ dataand analytics capabilities in order to help regulators improveenforcement strategies, and help determine if cost-efficientalternatives to litigation are available in some cases.

Another $2.5 million is requested to improve the DOL’s oversightof the federal Thrift Savings Program, and $6.5 million in grantmoney to help states implement state-sponsored workplace retirementinitiatives aimed to close the retirement plan access gap in smallbusinesses.

The White House is also proposing $100 million to fund portable,multiple employer pilot programs, which would be administered bythe DOL’s Chief Evaluation Office. The money would be directed tostates or non-profits, according to the EBSA’s budget proposal.

A copy of EBSA’s proposed budget can be accessed here.