House Committee on Financial Services Chair Maxine Waters, D-Calif., announced that she and other committee Democrats will attend the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.'s public meeting on Dec. 12, where the regulator is expected to vote on its proposed changes to the Community Reinvestment Act, or CRA.

Waters said she is concerned that the new CRA rule "will make it easier for banks to pass their CRA exams, weakening their obligation to responsibly serve communities across the country."

In a letter sent Dec. 11 to the Federal Reserve, FDIC and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the house committee requested that regulators provide a comment period of at least 120 days to review the proposal.

Enacted in 1977, the CRA requires banks to provide banking services to communities where they operate, in order to prevent banks from excluding certain groups, particularly minorities, from banking services.