Barney Frank: Seniority shouldn’t guarantee top committee spot

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) on Tuesday said seniority shouldn’t be the only factor in determining who will succeed him as the top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee. 

“You start out with seniority, but it shouldn’t take an enormous amount [of criteria] for people to vote [against giving someone a leadership post],” he told reporters.

Frank announced Monday that he will not seek reelection in 2012. He said seniority in Congress should be a “very rebuttable presumption” in determining who gets the top spot on a congressional panel. 

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) has the most seniority after Frank among Democrats on the House Financial Services Committee and is in line to succeed him as ranking member (or become he committee's chairwoman, if the Democrats regain the majority). But she is also the subject of an ethics probe, which might be a problem for her in getting the top Democratic spot on the panel. 

Frank said he planned to stay out of the process of determining his successor, as it will be an issue that comes after he leaves Congress.

But he did leave the door slightly open for a potential endorsement, saying “everything is possible.”

In a news release Monday, Waters highlighted her status as the next most-senior member, and said she hoped to “continue and expand” Frank’s work on the panel. Waters stopped short of explicitly saying she was looking to fill the position.

A polarizing figure in a similar vein to Frank, Waters is grappling with long-running allegations that she helped steer federal assistance to a bank in which her husband owned stock and once served as a board member. She has claimed her innocence and called the Senate Ethics Committee’s work on the matter compromised.

Democrats, both in leadership and on the committee, have so far been mum about the succession. Reps. Carolyn Maloney (N.Y.), Luis Gutierrez (Ill.), Nydia Velázquez (N.Y.) and Mel Watt (N.C.) all fall behind Waters in seniority.

The House Democratic Steering Committee will put forward candidates for top panel slots after the November elections who will then be voted on by the full caucus.

Whoever replaces Frank will succeed one of the more well-known members of Congress, and someone known to have a strong grasp of financial issues.

Frank struck an optimistic tone about his key legislative accomplishment even after his retirement — the Wall Street overhaul bearing his name. Republican efforts to roll back the Dodd-Frank financial reform law simply won’t win over the public, he argued.

“It’s too popular, there’s no question,” he said. “I don’t see the bumper sticker that says, ‘Let’s re-deregulate derivatives.’ ”

He added that as the law becomes fully implemented by regulators in the coming months, it will make it that much harder to remove. He did say, however, that the greatest threats to the reforms now are a Republican candidate taking the White House and appointing regulators who will not enforce the law, and GOP lawmakers not providing adequate funding to those regulators.

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