WASHINGTON — Most of the lawmakers who have thrown their hat in the ring to lead Republicans on the House Financial Services Committee make up a core group that currently controls the panel's subcommittees. But not Rep. Frank Lucas, the Oklahoma Republican.
Although Lucas is the longest-serving Republican on the committee, he doesn't have a leadership role. Republican rules bar him from serving as chairman of two bodies concurrently; Lucas currently chairs the House Science and Technology Committee.
But in an interview with American Banker, Lucas outlined his leadership on the House Science Committee and his previous experience leading Republicans on the House Agriculture Committee, where he helped write the last Farm Bill. As House Agriculture chair he oversaw the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which was then led by now-Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler, a frequent antagonist of Financial Services Republicans.
Come 2025, Lucas will be termed out of leadership on the House Science Committee, and is turning his sights on House Financial Services. Although he's been seen as an underdog in the race, Lucas told American Banker that he's the most experienced at standing in front of the Republican steering committee, which will ultimately decide who gets the top GOP job on House Financial Services, and that he has, for years, been successful in passing legislation alongside Democratic counterparts.
American Banker sat down with the other contenders for the GOP HFSC leadership: Reps.
What follows is a transcript of the conversation between American Banker and Lucas, edited for length and clarity.
American Banker: What do you think makes you a good fit to run House Financial Services?
Lucas: First off, my three friends who are in the field are all great people with lots of experience and very outgoing personalities. It'd be a pleasure to serve with them as chairman or I'd want them to serve with me if I were chairman. That said, I think my unique set of characteristics is a track record of making things happen.
I've led two other committees: Agriculture and Science. The '14 Farm Bill, which was the third-generation draft of farm policy in this country, which still stands today with moderate revisions, was the result of two and a half years of work, doing things that are hard and getting it done. Sometimes they were things that sometimes leadership knows should be done but can't always embrace in public.
In the Science Committee, I took a committee that was very focused on things like global warming and screaming at each other, and now we have had a very productive legislative agenda. Now because of Republican term limits, I have the time and the opportunity to ask for the ability to provide leadership on my third committee assignment, Financial Services.
There's lots of things out there that need to be done, and I believe my track record of working with the minority, working with my colleagues — especially the underclassmen, nurturing and bringing them along — and my willingness to listen to the stakeholders out there, which sometimes is lacking in this place, gives me a unique vantage point to make things happen in what has been a really complicated legislative environment for a long time.
Bottom line, simply, would be that I believe my style of working with and listening to all stakeholders, working to craft complicated legislation — I think it's time to give that a try on Financial Services.
AB: You've been on the committee for longer than any other Republican. What do you think Republicans have left to finish on financial and bank policy, and what would be your priorities?
Lucas: The financial services industry is a very diverse group of individuals. It's a very diverse group of business models. But in summation, I would say, I want bankers to be able to be bankers. The financial services people at the core are arbitrageurs of capital. They are best prepared in a market economy to determine what capital is worth. And they're the best individuals then to know how to most efficiently allocate that to create the best rate of return.
So what does that mean? It means spending time, as I have for some time, trying to get across to the Biden administration's appointees on the Securities Exchange Commission, that their rulemaking process where they try to factor in everything imaginable, that using the rulemaking process to force thinking about the environmental stuff inhibits the financial services sector, from efficiently allocating capital.
You've listened to me talk to the Fed representatives time and time again about the Basel capital requirements. If we just willy-nilly accept European standards on how much capital should be available. I don't want to inhibit our ability to have the free flow of capital.
Along those lines, one of the other issues I'm sensitive about is this growing trend of fewer and fewer publicly traded, publicly owned companies out there. Now, I'm not against private equity. But for real Americans, the ability to be able to buy stock in companies is a way for them to participate in this awesome economy. And if you have fewer and fewer options for people to buy stock, then they have fewer chances to share in that great opportunity.
AB: You talked about working with your Democratic colleagues in the past. Where do you think there's room for Republicans to compromise with Democrats on HFSC?
Lucas: I believe that there are areas where we can achieve consensus. Depending on what happens in November, Ranking Member Waters might be the chairwoman of the committee and [she and] I have worked in the past on things. She's not going to compromise her principles. I'm certainly not going to compromise mine. Maybe 5%, maybe 10% we'll agree, and on those things, we have a window to make progress. It goes back to the earlier issues that I discussed: Making sure that publicly traded companies are viable in this country so people can participate, having more opportunities for financial institutions out there. Those are things which I think ranking member Waters would agree are very important, and that we have a diversity of individuals who are in ownership positions and these kinds of things. And that becomes easier when you have more bank charters, not fewer.
The ranking member worked really quite closely with the chairman on crypto issues. Clearly, crypto is one of those things where we're in the wild wild west. I mean, the fella in the Bahamas [
AB: Talk a little bit more about what your time on House Agriculture has taught you about overseeing financial services. Where do you think there's overlap, and does that make you stand out here?
I spent a lot of time in hearings working on a whole lot of issues with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and in fact I have more experience with the SEC chairman, Mr. Gensler, than anyone else I can think of, from the eight years he was chairman of the CFTC under the Obama administration. So I've had my knuckles ground pretty hard in a whole bunch of these areas.
AB: There's been talk about you being an underdog in this race. What's your path to being named either chairman or ranking member of the committee? Are people missing something about your ability to win this?
Some people would say well, you haven't been a chairman of a subcommittee. Well, under Republican rules, you can only be chairman of one thing. I've chaired or led as ranking member the ag committee through the Farm Bill process, the science committee and I've done some legislating on financial services. The bottom line is, I think I'm well suited, maybe the best suited in the complicated world we're in right now to actually make things happen.
I get questions from folks about whether this is a long shot. But look at it this way, this is not a sprint, it's a marathon. It's a long race. There will be all sorts of things that will politically occur. Will we be in the majority? Will we be dealing with a Trump Treasury in 2025? Will it continue to be a Yellen Treasury under President Biden? We don't have a clue there.
The one thing I do know is this: K Street doesn't pick the chairman. The outside pressure groups don't pick the chairman or women. It's the steering committee made up of elected leadership and made up of leaders who represent regions.
When I go before them in November, it will be the seventh time I've appeared in front of the steering committee to ask for the opportunity to lead the committee. I don't think anyone else from the pack has done that before. Six times, the committee has entrusted me. Some will say the nature of the group has changed, and yeah, traditionally leadership has [its] thumb on the process of steering committee work, but it's a different world. It's an entirely different world in all the chaos we've gone through in leadership processes this year.
Now, I love and respect all my leaders, I've worked with all of them and I'm comfortable. But the steering committee itself tends to be the more mature leaders, it tends to be the people who've served on the steering committee for multiple terms. The people who I've interviewed in front of, the people who I've worked with for years and decades, I'll trust their judgment.
