House Democrats are poised to push the House Financial Services Committee into hot-button social issues.
With Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif, wielding the gavel and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and other progressive freshmen occupying the dais, the committee is set to intervene in new areas, such as monitoring diversity in companies’ hiring and — if Ocasio-Cortez has her way — scrutiny of investment in for-profit prisons.
Waters said Wednesday that she specifically plans to prod technology companies on their workforce diversity.
“I recently took a visit to Silicon Valley where I was able to visit some of the technology firms,” Waters told an audience at an event at the Center for American Progress. “I was a bit shocked to find out that it was so bad. That there were so few minorities, particularly blacks and Latinos, who had been hired by these companies.”
The Los Angeles Democrat said she planned to collect and publish data on the number of minorities and women working at tech companies in an effort to highlight what she termed deficient practices.
Ocasio-Cortez, for her part, said that she aims to use her position on the committee to monitor an industry normally beyond the scope of the committee’s oversight: private prisons.
“I think that are some really legitimate concerns over the practices that a lot of these private detention centers participate in to maximize profit for shareholders,” Ocasio-Cortez told the Washington Examiner. “And there are elements of that absolutely falls within the purview of those that finance such detention centers, and I think it’s important to start asking those questions.”
Ocasio-Cortez said that she initially tried to join the committees with oversight over taxes, healthcare, and the environment, which were points of emphasis in her insurgent campaign, but that leadership informed her that no freshman would get on those panels. But she said that her seat on the Financial Services Committee will allow her to pursue her agenda.
“For us, we got exactly what we wanted, because everything that I did campaign on does have jurisdiction, in one way or another, on Financial Services,” she said.
A posse of freshman progressives are expected to join the committee along with Ocasio-Cortez: Reps. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., Katie Porter, D-Calif., and Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, D-Ill., all of whom are to the Left of much of the Democratic caucus and could influence the committee to be more aggressive in overseeing Wall Street and advancing progressive legislation.
“They wanted to come onto the committee, they know many of these issues, and they’re prepared to fight for our families,” said Waters.
Ocasio-Cortez and the other apologetically progressive freshman will join a group of Democrats on the panel that already includes strident liberals, but also features centrist members of the party who have worked with Republicans in the past on legislation to ease regulatory burdens.
On Wednesday, Ocasio-Cortez tweeted that the committee, in the past, has been “a place where big bank lobbyists were slipping in their work.”
These legislators, under public pressure, couldn’t deliver as much for big bank lobbyists.
They had to vacate one of the most powerful committees in the House. That made a space that big banks couldn’t fill, and how we got *several* non-Corp funded members into places of power.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) January 16, 2019
Rep. Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J., a leading member of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus that met with Trump at the White House on Wednesday to discuss the shutdown, said he hadn’t spoken to the new progressive members about their ideas for the committee yet, but that what Waters wants will ultimately matter most.
“We’ll see,” said Gottheimer, who represents a district with a number of New York City commuters and finance industry workers, when asked if he was concerned whether the new members might advance policies he disagrees with.
“I know that the chairwoman has her agenda,” Gottheimer said. “I think she has a perspective on what she wants on the agenda, and she drives the agenda.”
Waters said that her agenda starts with overseeing the Trump administration’s management of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the agency tasked with regulating mortgages, credit cards, and all other consumer financial products. Republicans have sought to limit the agency’s powers and lessen the burden of the regulations it enforces.
Waters also said Wednesday that her to-do list includes reauthorizing the National Flood Insurance Program and the Export-Import Bank, and potentially diving into the Trump Organization’s finances.
On a more bipartisan front, Waters also said she might work with the committee’s top Republican, Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., on legislation related to crowdfunding and angel investing as well as on a bill the duo introduced last Congress to study transparency in corporations selling off their own stock.
