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.

The session, titled A Way Forward For Housing Finance Reform:  Finding Sustainable Solutions to Ensure Access, Affordability, and Taxpayer Protection, proved to be a very  substantive and at times spirited discussion. The panelists included Julia Gordon, Director of Housing Finance and Policy at the Center for American Progress, Nela Richardson, Senior Economic Analyst at Bloomberg Government, Ellen Seidman, Advisor to the Urban Institute and former Director of the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Thrift Supervision, Jim Millstein, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Millstein & Company, Larry Parks, Founder of the Potomac Coalition, and Robert Rozen, Commissioner at the Bipartisan Policy Center Housing Commission.

Attending the discussion were Representatives John C. Carney, Jr., Michael E. Capuano, Wm. Lacey Clay, Al Green, Denny Heck, Rubén Hinojosa, Nydia M. Velázquez and Melvin L. Watt.

Ranking Member Waters told those assembled that “I think that now that we’re beginning to emerge from a period of grave fragility --  it’s precisely the time to think about how we can reshape the secondary mortgage market. My hope is that we can engage in housing finance reform on a comprehensive basis during the 113th Congress.”