Joint Center Releases Statement Strongly Supporting Congresswoman Maxine Waters’ Bid to Chair the House Financial Services Committee 

For Immediate Release
Nov. 12, 2026 

Contact:
Kennedy Fortner, kennedy.fortner@jointcenter.org 

Joint Center Releases Statement Strongly Supporting Congresswoman Maxine Waters’ Bid to Chair the House Financial Services Committee 

WASHINGTON, D.C. — In response to Congresswoman Maxine Waters’ (D-CA) bid to chair the House Financial Services Committee in the 120th Congress, the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies issued the following statement strongly supporting her bid:    

“As President of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, I strongly support Congresswoman Maxine Waters’ bid to chair the House Financial Services Committee in the 120th Congress,” said Dedrick Asante-Muhammad, president of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.  “For more than three decades, Congresswoman Waters has worked on the priorities at the heart of the Joint Center’s mission: closing the racial wealth divide, expanding homeownership, and making sure families, entrepreneurs, and communities get fair access to capital.” 

When Congresswoman Waters chaired the Committee from 2019 to 2023, and since then as its Ranking Member, she has defended the Community Reinvestment Act, strengthened minority depository institutions and community development financial institutions, and fought to keep the lending data that exposes discrimination. When Section 1071 small-business lending data came under attack this year, she warned that the change ‘guts the very data small businesses and the public need.’ Congresswoman Waters has spent her career building coalitions that turn issues that disproportionately affect Black and Latino communities into national policy. 

Asante-Muhammad added, “This moment calls for her experience. Voters have just given the new House majority a clear mandate to address the affordability crisis facing American families. The Democratic Party has both an opportunity and a responsibility to show that it values leaders from the communities that won it both the House and the Senate. 

Congresswoman Waters’ agenda speaks directly to the economic pressures households feel most sharply. It includes expanding affordable housing, ending junk fees, restoring an independent and fully funded Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and protecting the Community Reinvestment Act. Returning her to the chair would put one of the country’s most experienced and effective financial policy leaders in charge of that work, and it would affirm that the voters who helped deliver this majority will be represented where economic policy is made. I urge her colleagues to support her.” 

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About the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies 

The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, America’s Black think tank, provides compelling and actionable policy solutions to eradicate persistent and evolving barriers to the full freedom of Black people in America. We are the trusted forum for leading experts and scholars to participate in major public policy debates and promote ideas that advance Black communities. We use evidence-based research, analysis, convenings, and strategic communications to support Black communities and a network of allies.