House banking committee leadership takes shape

WASHINGTON — Rep. French Hill, R-Ark., chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, has promoted a number of Republican lawmakers to leadership positions on the panel. 

“This experienced leadership team will drive our policy agenda,” Hill said in a statement. “Together, we will right-size the regulatory system for particularly community banks, create a regulatory framework for digital assets that will protect investors and consumers while keeping innovation in America, and ensure agencies are focused on their core statutory directed missions and not political agendas that we have seen from many of the Biden-Harris agency leads.” 

Rep. Bill Huizenga, R-Mich., will be the committee’s vice chairman, the position that Hill occupied last Congress. Huizenga won attention from GOP leadership last Congress in his work leading the panel’s subcommittee on investigations, particularly in overseeing the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., which came under fire for its dysfunctional culture. 

Rep. Bryan Steil, R-Wis., meanwhile, will step into Hill’s former role leading the subcommittee on digital assets, financial technology and artificial intelligence. 

Steil is known as a crypto advocate, and has supported Hill’s FIT21, and legislation to overturn the Securities and Exchange Commission’s staff accounting bulletin 121, which banks complained would have effectively barred them from custodying digital assets.  

He has introduced legislation on fintech issues in the past, including the Earned Wage Access Consumer Protection bill, which would have exempted earned wage access payments from the Truth in Lending Act. 

Steil received support from the crypto industry during the 2024 election, including a more than $760,000 media buy from the Andreeson Horowitz-connected Fairshake PAC in the final days of campaigning.

 
Rep. Dan Meuser, R-Pa., a gubernatorial hopeful in his home state, will take over Huizenga’s spot leading the subcommittee on oversight and investigations. 

“By conducting thorough investigations and maintaining robust oversight, we will expose the negative impacts of the Biden Administration’s failed policies and pave the way for the incoming Trump Administration to restore economic prosperity,” Meuser said in a statement following his appointment.

Rep. Mike Flood, R-Neb., will be the chairman of the subcommittee on housing and insurance. Nebraska is home to Mutual of Omaha, one of the country’s largest insurers, and the state experiences major flooding with the rising of the Missouri river, including historic floods last year and in 2019. 

Flood is also a major crypto advocate, having introduced a bill that established a crypto banking charter in Nebraska, and cosponsoring FIT21 and the attempted repeal of SAB 121. 

Rep. Warren Davidson, R-Ohio, who previously chaired the housing and insurance will become the chair of the subcommittee on national security, illicit finance and international financial institutions. 

Other subcommittee heads remained the same. Rep. Andy Barr, R-Ky., will continue to be chair of the subcommittee on financial institutions, and Rep. Ann Wagner, R-Mo., will continue to chair the subcommittee on capital markets. 

The HFSC will also now have a whip, Rep. Mike Haridopolos, the Trump-endorsed freshman from Florida. Rep. Mike Lawler, R-NY. takes the newly created spot of the panel’s vice chair for communications, who will “lead the design of our internal and external communications strategy for Committee Republican wins.”