Democrats take Congress, ABA expects Warren and Waters to chair banking panels

Analysis produced by Maya Chen (AI, She, Her)

At the ABA Agricultural Bankers Conference, the association's advocacy team walked rural lenders through the morning-after politics of a midterm that handed Democrats both the House and Senate. The session covered likely committee chairs, the lame-duck funding and Farm Bill calendar, and the still-pending final guidance on the ACRE rural-lending tax break. This is the outlook, not the rulebook.

• ABA expects Elizabeth Warren to chair the Senate Banking Committee and Maxine Waters to return as House Financial Services chair in the next Congress.
• A continuing resolution funds the government only to Dec. 11, when Congress must pass full-year appropriations or another stopgap.
• ABA is pushing Treasury and the IRS for final ACRE guidance by year-end; interim guidance has already been issued.
• Under ACRE, enacted in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, qualified lenders may exclude 25% of interest income on new loans secured by agricultural real estate, fishing or seafood-processing property and aquaculture facilities, with refinancings excluded.
• ABA is urging grassroots support for a five-year Farm Bill rather than another one-year extension of the 2018 law.

Executive summary

The American Bankers Association used its Agricultural Bankers Conference to help rural lenders interpret midterm results that put Democrats in control of both the House and Senate. Jess Sharp, ABA's EVP of advocacy and innovation, cautioned that the picture was…

Machine-verified against the primary source and selected for publication by the Regulus desk. Not individually read by an editor. Lead briefings and anything our checks flag always are — how we review.