Congresswoman Maxine Waters, Ranking Member of the House Financial Services Committee, made the following statement today on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives. Ranking Member Waters opposed the passage of H.R. 1256, the Swap Jurisdiction Certainty Act, under closed rule. Ranking Member Waters led the debate noting that H.R. 1256 handcuffs our regulators reach overseas, and instead forces the U.S. taxpayer to rely on foreign regulators to protect them from institutions that bet the h... Read more

Congresswoman Maxine Waters, Ranking Member of the House Financial Services Committee, made the following opening statement today at the full committee hearing, titled “Beyond the GSEs: Examples of Successful Housing Finance Models without Explicit Government Guarantees.” Ranking Member Waters in her statement reveals “that while other countries may invest fewer resources in homeownership than the U.S., these foreign nations also make more significant investments in public and assisted rental ho... Read more

Congresswoman Maxine Waters, Ranking Member of the House Financial Services Committee, made the following statement yesterday on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives. Ranking Member Waters called for bipartisan support to an amendment, offered by Rep. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) that would delay implementation of Section 207 of the Biggert-Waters Flood Insurance Reform Act of 2012, and provide relief for many homeowners across the nation facing significant increases in their flood insurance pr... Read more

Today, Ranking Member Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), joined U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Lois Capps (D-Calif.), in sending a letter to eight executive agencies urging them to protect surviving spouses from foreclosure. This segment of the homeowner population – often women in their later years – faces unique circumstances that unfairly deprive them of opportunities to avoid losing their home. "Surviving spouses throughout the country have found themselves in this troubling situation,... Read more

Congresswoman Maxine Waters, Ranking Member of the House Financial Services Committee, lit up a committee hearing Wednesday by calling for aggressive prosecution of financial institutions involved in the laundering of illegal drug money. The hearing, held by the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee of the House Committee on Financial Services, focused on the question of whether large financial institutions are immune from federal prosecution. Mythili Raman, Acting Assistant Attorney General... Read more

Congresswoman Maxine Waters, Ranking Member of the House Financial Services Committee, delivered the following statement at today's full Committee hearing with Treasury Secretary Lew: Thank you very much Mr. Chairman. I am very pleased to welcome Secretary Lew to his first appearance before the Financial Services Committee to deliver the annual report of the Financial Stability Oversight Council as required by the Dodd-Frank Act. We are aware of your tremendous responsibility, we are very please... Read more

Congresswoman Maxine Waters, Ranking Member of the House Financial Services Committee, today made the following statement on the House Floor: I rise to strongly oppose HR 1062. This bill places significant additional requirements for economic analysis by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), effectively bringing any efforts at rulemaking to a standstill. Let’s be clear: the purpose of this legislative effort is to stop implementation of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Prot... Read more

The U.S. House of Representatives today passed the “SEC Regulatory Accountability Act” (H.R. 1062), a Republican bill which despite its common-sense title would greatly restrict the ability of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to protect millions of American investors. Congresswoman Maxine Waters, Ranking Member of the House Financial Services Committee, led debate for the Democrats. She told colleagues that the bill would make it easier for special interests to sue the SEC to block r... Read more

Two senior Democratic lawmakers from the House – U.S. Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), the senior Democrat on the Education and the Workforce Committee, and U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), Ranking Member on the Financial Services Committee – released the following joint statement today after the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) published a report highlighting ways in which student loan debt can have a domino effect on other financial decisions for consumers. For example, the report ... Read more

Congresswoman Maxine Waters, Ranking Member of the House Financial Services Committee, made the following statement at a meeting of the Committee held today to mark up legislation addressing the nation’s derivatives markets: Mr. Chairman, thank you for holding this mark-up this morning on a broad package of bills related to a wide-range of issues facing this Committee. Let me open this mark-up discussion by repeating what I have consistently said: I’m open to pieces of legislation that truly rep... Read more

Congresswoman Maxine Waters offered the following statement today in response to news that President Barack Obama will nominate Congressman Melvin L. Watt to be Director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency. It is with high regard and great respect that I endorse the nomination of Representative Mel Watt to head the Federal Housing Finance Agency. We are at a crossroads in our economic recovery, and the FHFA must play a leading role in laying the groundwork for the long-term stability of the ho... Read more

Also Joins Call for Increased Scrutiny of the Third-Party Medical Financing Market Congresswoman Maxine Waters, Ranking Member of the House Financial Services Committee, today took steps to comprehensively address the impact that medical debt has on consumers by introducing legislation which would require consumer reporting agencies to remove any information related to fully paid or settled medical debt from a consumer’s credit report within 45 days. At the same time she joined two other senior... Read more

Congresswoman Maxine Waters, Ranking Member of the House Financial Services Committee, today sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, Chairman of the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC), seeking to elicit his views on the progress of the “living wills” provision of the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010. The provision requires the nation’s largest bank holding companies and other systemically important financial firms as designated by the FSOC to file Orderly Re... Read more

Congresswoman Maxine Waters, Ranking Member of the House Financial Services Committee, today released the following statement in reaction to the annual report of the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC). Waters praises the FSOC’s work to monitor systemic risk and identify potential vulnerabilities in the financial system. Ranking Member Waters also calls on members of the Council to pay close attention to a series of bills which will soon be considered by the House Financial Services Com... Read more

In her opening statement today at a hearing of the House Committee on Financial Services, Congresswoman Maxine Waters, Ranking Member of the Committee, contested the notion that regulatory oversight is an impediment to recovery in the housing finance market. The title of the hearing called by the Republican majority is “Building a Sustainable Housing Finance System: Examining Regulatory Impediments to Private Investment Capital”. Waters repeatedly has urged her Republican colleagues to take up t... Read more

Congresswoman Maxine Waters, Ranking Member of the House Financial Services Committee, today sent the attached letter to Chairman Jeb Hensarling, responding to his refusal to allow Richard Cordray, Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), to testify before the Committee. Mr. Hensarling declared his intention to block Director Cordray in a letter released yesterday in which he claims that President Obama’s recess appointment of Cordray was unconstitutional. In her letter to Ch... Read more

Congresswoman Maxine Waters, Ranking Member of the House Financial Services Committee, joined by Representative Michael E. Capuano and 65 of their Democratic House colleagues, has released a letter to key Members of the House Committee on Appropriations urging adequate funding for critical community development and housing programs in the Fiscal Year 2014 Transportation, Housing and Urban Development (THUD) appropriations bill. The letter to THUD Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Tom Latham a... Read more

Congresswoman Maxine Waters, Ranking Member of the House Financial Services Committee, joined by Representative Carolyn Maloney and 51 other Members of Congress, has released a letter to key Members of the House Committee on Appropriations calling for full funding of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) at the amount requested by the Obama administration for fiscal year 2014. The SEC is responsible for ensuring that the nation’s capital markets are fair, orderly and efficient, and that i... Read more

Congresswoman Maxine Waters, Ranking Member of the House Financial Services Committee, has introduced legislation to provide the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) with the authority to impose and collect user fees on investment advisors. The Investment Adviser Examination Improvement Act of 2013 (H.R. 1627) would provide the SEC with a dedicated funding source in order to make possible a more robust investment adviser oversight program. Since the financial crisis five years ago, publ... Read more

Congresswoman Maxine Waters, Ranking Member of the House Financial Services Committee, and Congressman Collin C. Peterson, Ranking Member of the House Committee on Agriculture have submitted a motion for leave to file an amicus brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals focusing on the position limits rule promulgated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). The CFTC’s rule would limit the amount of certain commodity futures, options or swaps that an investor (who does not make any use of t... Read more

Ranking Member Waters opening statement at 4-16-2013 Financial Institutions Subcommittee Hearing titled, “Examining Community Bank Regulatory Burdens” I want to thank the witnesses for taking time to come talk to us today. I know it’s still a challenging time for community sized institutions such as yourselves and it can’t be easy to take time away from your businesses. And I want to get you all back home as soon as possible because we really need you to be out there lending in your communities ... Read more

Congresswoman Maxine Waters, Ranking Member of the House Financial Services Committee, today released the following statement in response to testimony by Daniel Stipano, deputy chief counsel of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), in his appearance before the Senate Banking Committee. In his testimony, Stipano stated that the OCC “would welcome a legislative change” regarding the use of independent contractors. “I’m pleased to hear the OCC say that it would welcome legislation to... Read more

Congresswoman Maxine Waters, Ranking Member of the House Financial Services Committee, convened a bipartisan panel this morning on Capitol Hill to discuss various proposals for reform of the Government-Sponsored Enterprises and the secondary mortgage market. “The goal of this panel is to emphasize the imperative for reform, inform our members, and hopefully spur the Financial Services Committee to continue this dialogue through the hearing and mark-up process,” said Waters in her opening remarks... Read more

Congresswoman Maxine Waters, Ranking Member of the House Financial Services Committee, announced today that she has introduced legislation to reform the use of independent consultants in banking regulation and enforcement processes. She is joined by Representatives Elijah E. Cummings, Al Green and John Conyers, Jr. as original cosponsors. The Stop Outsourcing Banking Enforcement and Examination Act would impose significant transparency measures on banking enforcement by requiring that consent or... Read more

Congresswoman Maxine Waters, Ranking Member of the House Financial Services Committee, will moderate a bipartisan panel discussion on plans to reform the nation’s secondary mortgage market. The discussion will consider the lingering challenges facing the housing market, the principles that should frame Congress’s consideration of housing finance reform, and various approaches to ensure access to and affordability of mortgage credit. What: Panel discussion: A Way Forward For Housing Finance Refor... Read more