Meet 4 new banking lawmakers

Meet 4 new lawmakers likely to have an impact on banking

January 8, 2025 2:00 PM

WASHINGTON — The 2024 elections reshaped the way members of Congress are thinking about banking and financial policies in the new year, with a number of new crypto-friendly voices joining key committees and reinvigoration for a deregulatory agenda.

A number of prominent banking voices in Congress departed after the 2024 elections. Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., formerly the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, and Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer, R-Mo., both retired from politics, and Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, lost his reelection campaign.

The crypto industry also spent a huge amount in politics during 2024, eclipsing all other financial interests in the election, and helped put a number of people in Congress who are likely to support the industry's interests.

And as Congress returns this week, the Senate Banking Committee and the House Financial Services Committee recently finalized their lists of lawmakers who will sit on those committees, including a number of people with financial industry experience or crypto industry support.

Here are four lawmakers who are likely to be weighty voices in finance and banking in the next Congress.

Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-Neb.)

Ricketts is newly elected and is the eldest son of Joe Rickets, the founder of TD Ameritrade. Sen. Ricketts worked at Ameritrade, including as its chief operating officer under his father's tenure as CEO, before leaving to launch his unsuccessful bid for Senate in 2006.

"I'm honored by the opportunity to use my business experience on the Budget and Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committees," Ricketts said in a statement. "These committees will play an important role in extending the Trump tax cuts, controlling our spending, and providing regulatory relief to job-creators."

As governor of Nebraska from 2015 to 2023, Ricketts signed the Nebraska Financial Innovation Act, which authorized a new charter for digital asset depositories. A digital asset firm, Telecoin Inc., sought to become the first bank chartered under the law in a hearing in December.

Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio)

Moreno was bound to be a big name in banking policy circles when he unseated the former chairman of the committee, Sherrod Brown, in the 2024 election.

But Moreno also benefited from the millions raised by the crypto industry this election cycle. His contest drew more spending than any Senate race in history and Moreno, who came into the election cycle with very little name recognition as a former car salesman, eventually beat the longtime Ohio senator decisively.

Moreno has dabbled in the digital-asset space. He founded a business called Champ Titles, which puts car titles on the blockchain, but sold his shares when he decided to run.

Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.)

Gallego will take over Krysten Sinema's seat on the banking panel. He previously served in the House and, alongside Rep. Katie Porter, D-Calif., introduced executive pay clawback legislation in the wake of the Silicon Valley Bank collapse.

On the campaign trail and during his time in the House, he criticized Sinema's vote in the 2018 tailoring legislation led by then-Senate Banking Committee Chairman Mike Crapo, R-Idaho.

"The SVB collapse is a direct result of Kyrsten Sinema's choice to side with big banks over everyday Arizonans," Gallego said in a social media post. "Sinema is in the pocket of Wall Street and her vote put hardworking Arizona, their families and their small business at risk of another 2008-like meltdown."

Rep. Tim Moore (R-N.C.)

Moore will be a freshman member of the House Financial Services Committee.

While first-term lawmakers don't normally make a splash on the large House finance panel, Moore has a more impressive-than-typical pedigree. He most recently served as speaker of the North Carolina General Assembly, a position Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., an outspoken member of the Senate Banking Committee, previously held.

Moore represents the 14th Congressional District, in Charlotte's western suburbs, which includes some of the city's wealthiest neighborhoods, into the mountainous region approaching Asheville. His district is home to many workers at Bank of America and Truist's headquarters, as well as Wells Fargo's regional office.

As speaker of the North Carolina legislature, Moore took a supportive position of crypto-friendly legislation. He has made comments in support of President-elect Donald Trump's bitcoin strategic reserve and led anti-CBDC legislation in the state, which North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper vetoed.

Bonus: Missing in action

There's a few notable omissions from the rosters of the banking committees this year. Rep. Riley Moore, the former Republican Treasurer of West Virginia who famously included some large banks on a list of institutions banned from doing business with the state, didn't get a seat on the House Financial Services Committee, despite his focus on banking issues on the campaign trail.

Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., a pro-fintech and crypto lawmaker who also benefited from crypto spending in the election, was left off the Senate Banking Committee.

Rep. Dave Min, D-Calif., is also absent from the House Financial Services Committee. Min takes the seat of former Rep. Katie Porter, who unsuccessfully ran against Schiff for Senate, and similarly will be a bank policy law professor who will not serve on the committee that oversees the agencies in his areas of expertise.

Min once worked as an aide for Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., as a bank policy counsel, and as a staff attorney on the Securities and Exchange Commission. He was an associate director for financial markets policy at the left-leaning Center for American Progress and in 2009 became its associate director for financial markets policy and supervisor of the Mortgage Finance Working Group.

He, like Porter, was a law professor at the University of California, Irvine, focused on banking law.