There's increasing political support for the view among a handful of liberal Senators that financial reform needs to be signficantly toughened up from the Dodd bill. The most recent comes from new polling by the Consumer Federation of America.
The poll found that 62% of Americans support the creation of a "new federal agency to protect consumers who purchase banking and other financial services." Only 34% opposed such a plan.
Additionally, CFA found that a whopping 85% believe "consumers need more effective protections against unfair and deceptive practices by banks and other financial institutions."
So far, the Chamber of Commerce has spent $3 million to kill the CFPA. They are also spending signficant face time with Mitch McConnell, who in turn did their bidding by going to the Senate floor to tout their talking points.
Mitch McConnell is putting the Republicans squarely on the side of the banksters, which is where Democrats need them to be, looking toward November. There's a strong likelihood that at least one Republican--Scott Brown--could be peeled away from his caucus on this one, as could either one of the Maine twins and/or Voinovich--all of whom voted with Democrats yesterday to break the filibuster on the unemployment insurance extension.
This should be a no-brainer for Senate Dems--the more they take on Wall Street to stand up for consumers, the better. That's true for policy and for politics. Force the Republicans to stand with the banksters.