5 New House Committee Chiefs for Advisors to Watch

With the House flipping to GOP control, new faces now appear atop key committees with oversight of issues that affect the advisory industry.

New House Financial Services Committee Chairman Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., “is a serious legislator,” Neil Simon, vice president of government relations at the Investment Adviser Association in Washington, told ThinkAdvisor Friday in an interview.

“He has very strong relations with [House Speaker Kevin] McCarthy and the GOP leadership in the House,” Simon said, adding, “There’s a great deal of skepticism about Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler’s agenda. I think we can expect that Gensler and other top SEC officials will be called to testify before the committee quite regularly,” with lots of questions about “current and proposed rulemaking.”

J. Mark Iwry, head of national retirement policy during the Obama-Biden administration who’s now a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, told ThinkAdvisor Friday that the chairs of the House Education and the Workforce and Financial Services committees “have important roles in shaping the future direction of key issues such as ESG investing and the fiduciary rules for investment advisors, including oversight and other interaction with the Labor Department and the SEC, respectively, in those areas.”

Max Richtman, president and CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, noted in a recent op-ed for The Hill that Republicans now “chair the powerful House Ways and Means and Budget committees, which have tremendous influence over Social Security and Medicare policy.”

Fortunately, Richtman wrote, “a majority Democratic Senate and President Biden have the power to block major legislation to cut or undermine Social Security and Medicare. But they may be under tremendous pressure from the GOP to make concessions during debt ceiling and budget negotiations.”

Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., whose “historic” Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement (Secure) 2.0 Act of 2022 was signed into law, is no longer chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee.

Industry officials don’t expect any significant retirement savings legislation to be passed in this Congress.

See the gallery for new chairs in five key committees.