"The 60-to-40 vote -- the minimum required to end debate -- succeeded
The legislation still stands to undergo more changes before it arrives on the president's desk. If the Senate passes its bill soon, as expected, lawmakers must reconcile it with the one that passed the House, hammering out differences between the two bills and approving a final version"
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Senate clears way to vote on financial reform
The Senate voted Thursday afternoon to end its three-week debate on a bill to rewrite the nation's financial regulations, paving the way for a final vote on the landmark legislation.
The 60-to-40 vote -- the minimum required to end debate -- succeeded, though two discontented Democrats broke party ranks for the second day in a row. The measure squeaked by with the help of three Republicans: Sens. Olympia J. Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine, and Scott Brown of Massachusetts, whose concerns Obama administration officials worked to assuage in the lead-up to Thursday's vote.
"It's been hard to get to this point," Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) said on the Senate floor, adding, "but I think it's been a good debate."
Under Senate rules, debate on the legislation is now limited to 30 additional hours, though a final vote could come sooner. Reid said it would be "the best of all worlds" if lawmakers could wrap up the bill late Thursday and move on to other issues.
The massive bill spearheaded by Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) would, among other things, create a new consumer protection watchdog housed at the Federal Reserve, establish oversight of the vast derivatives market and give the government power to wind down large, failing financial firms. It largely mirrors the blueprint laid out by the Obama administration last June, as well as a bill passed by the House in December.
Thursday's vote places President Obama on the brink of securing his second major legislative victory of the year, following the passage of his health-care bill in March. In numerous speeches and statements, Obama has called financial reform one of his top priorities and pushed Congress to approve the legislation as quickly in an effort to correct failures that led to the recent crisis, which cost millions of Americans their jobs and savings.
In the race to wrap up the wide-ranging bill this week, Democratic leaders hit a snag Wednesday when two of their own, Sens. Maria Cantwell of Washington and Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, unexpectedly voted against ending debate on the legislation, as did Brown, who had told Reid he would support the motion but changed his mind. While Brown changed his vote Thursday after administration officials assured him they would work to exempt several kinds of financial firms from the strictest oversight of regulators, Cantwell and Feingold did not.
Cantwell was incensed that a change she proposed to a section of the bill concerning financial derivatives had not gotten a vote. She wanted to close what she said were loopholes that remain in that part of the legislation; she was seeking tougher sanctions for firms that enter into deals not approved by central clearinghouses and cleared on public exchanges.
Cantwell also had teamed with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) on a proposal to reinstate the Depression-era Glass-Steagall law, repealed in 1999, that separated commercial from investment banking. That amendment also has not had a vote.
Feingold said he was not satisfied that the legislation went far enough to prevent another financial meltdown. "Ending debate on the bill is finishing before the job is done," he said in a statement Wednesday.
Other senators have shared that sentiment in recent days. Lawmakers have filed more than 400 proposed amendments to the bill, but far less than that have received a hearing on the Senate floor, angering members of both parties.
Dodd still could offer a hefty "manager's amendment" aimed at resolving lingering issues and shoring up support for the bill. At this point, however, few if any additional individual amendments are likely to receive consideration.
Two proposed amendments still likely to get a vote are a provision by Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) that would exempt auto dealers from the reach of the new consumer watchdog, and a measure pushed by Sens. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) that would ban banks from making speculative investments using their own capital, known as proprietary trading, and from owning hedge funds or private-equity funds.
The fate of the two controversial measures became linked this week, as Levin and Merkley used a procedural maneuver to attach their measure to Brownback's.
The administration and Dodd have supported the Levin-Merkley amendment but hotly opposed Brownback's attempt to carve out auto dealers. Now that Levin-Merkley amendment can succeed only if Brownback's measure also succeeds, officials said they would prefer that both amendments fail, denying the auto dealers an exemption.
"We support the Merkley-Levin amendment," an administration official said Thursday, "but we must not sacrifice protections for American families against unscrupulous auto lending practices to pass Merkley-Levin as attached to the Brownback amendment when the Dodd bill already provides strong protection against excessive risk-taking by banks."
In recent weeks, Dodd and the administration have tread a narrow line in trying to shepherd the bill toward the finish line. They successfully have fended off conservative efforts to scale back portions of the legislation while resisting most liberal attempts to mandate more dramatic regulations. Senate Democrats also have courted key Republicans, winning key support along the way from Collins and Snowe.
The bill has undergone alterations throughout the Senate debate, picking up new restrictions on credit ratings agencies and credit card companies and broadening audits of the Fed, among other changes.
The legislation still stands to undergo more changes before it arrives on the president's desk. If the Senate passes its bill soon, as expected, lawmakers must reconcile it with the one that passed the House, hammering out differences between the two bills and approving a final version.
washington post
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