Over a decade since congress directed the SEC to have a consolidated audit trail and as a citizen remembering that time I for one was shocked that tbe SEC did not have one at that time, upon reviewing congressional hearings my understanding is that members of Congress where also shocked. We assume the SEC does the job required since the great depression, sadly this is not the example the SEC has always shown and has to be constantly reminded from Congress. Reading the request for comment proposal does not give a citizen commenter adequate information about why any exemption at all is required or why any delay or hold up is necessary or could arise. Simplifying my understanding and perhaps for the public I write this (asking for confirmation if this is correct?): Under the CAT NMS Plan (Section 11.6), Financial Accountability Milestones (FAMs) establish four target implementation phases and deadlines that govern whether CAT participants can collect fee recoveries for post-amendment operational expenses. The Four Financial Accountability Milestones • Period 1 (FAM 1): Initial Industry Member Core Equity and Option Reporting. • Period 2 (FAM 2): Full Implementation of Core Equity Reporting Requirements. • Period 3 (FAM 3): Full Availability and Regulatory Utilization of Transactional Database Functionality. • Period 4 (FAM 4): Full Implementation of CAT NMS Plan Requirements (completed or under exemption review as of August 11, 2026). Funding and Compliance Impact • Fee Penalties: Missing milestone deadlines reduces the overall fee recovery available to plan participants. • Cost Recovery: Recouping historical and post-amendment costs depends directly on satisfying or receiving some sort of exemptive relief for these precise milestones after more than a decade of a mandate by congress? What is actually going on here? How can even small firms come up with a trading transaction record and yet large firms cannot get the data to the SEC in real time? We as individuals are paying these data costs over and over because there are no single affordable vendors who are providing us the total and accurate real time volume etc on a real time basis. There is no excuse for the SEC not having this data however in the consolidated audit trail that could be lawful after this amount of time from the majority of large firms. One can only imagine that this would be a difficulty from small firms, correct? Who is asking for an exemption?