New Faces on the House Financial Services Committee

A number of congressional freshmen, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY-14) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI-13), are set to join the House Financial Services Committee, which will be chaired by Maxine Waters (D-CA-43) and Ranking Member Patrick McHenry (R-NC-10).

A full list of the committee’s members is set to be finalized no later than next week, but several media reports have named four Democratic freshmen expected to be on the committee, including Reps. Ocasio-Cortez, Tlaib, Katie Porter (D-CA-45), and Ayanna Pressley (D-MA-7).

All four are members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, and many of them have refused corporate money during their respective campaigns. This could substantially shape the issues that the Committee focuses on in 2019.

“I don’t take corporate PAC money,” said Porter. “I think we’re going to see some other members put on the committee who don’t take corporate PAC money. This is going to change the perspective on the committee and the issues it chooses to focus on.”

Rep. Ocasio-Cortez confirmed her membership on the committee via Twitter. She stated that she would begin “digging into the student loan crisis, examining for-profit prisons/ICE detention, and exploring the development of public & postal banking.”

A senior member on the House Financial Services Committee, Gregory Meeks, (D-NY-5) has welcomed the new members of the committee but also cautioned against Democratic in-fighting. “I don’t want a scenario like they had on the Republican side — I don’t think we’re going to get there — where you had a Freedom Caucus that ends up just trying to break and stop everything and any kind of progress,” said Meeks.