According to Barney Frank and Chris Dodd who both just got out of a meeting with President Obama, both concluded that there would be a public financial regulatory conference in regards to the house and the senate bills. The quote will be up as soon as possible.
Public Conference for Financial Reform
Economics of Contempt on Conference
I'm citing Economics of Contempt's analysis of what's going to happen with the bill. The author is a pretty prominent financial blogger who appears to know what he's talking about with these things.
An anticlimactic ending in the Senate tonight. Neither of the big post-cloture amendments — Brownback's auto-dealer CFPA exemption and the Merkley-Levin amendment— ended up getting votes. Brownback will get a vote on a motion to instruct the Senate's conferees on Monday. Instructions to conferees are non-binding, but winning on a motion to instruct would give Brownback substantial leverage in conference, since the House bill contains an auto-dealer exemption already. So don't write Monday's vote off as unimportant just because it's non-binding; the Senate takes these things seriously, and it could very well determine whether there's an auto-dealer exemption in the final conference report. (And for the record, I think exempting auto dealers from the CFPA is an awful idea.)
I don't know exactly how it went down, but Merkley and Levin caved as well. I suspect that Reid and Dodd promised to designate Merkley and Levin as conferees with the authority to negotiate the Volcker language only. Either that, or Reid and Dodd adequately assured them that they'll "do everything they can" to protect the Volcker Rule in conference. Frankly, I hope it was the latter, since as I wrote earlier, the Merkley-Levin language was terrible. Better to get someone who actually understands the language of U.S. banking law negotiating the Volcker Rule in conference.
Merkley and Levin getting a spot on the conference will help to solidify some of the Volcker Rule language that's in the bill. I believe that it was a high price to pay to prevent the Volcker Rule from getting a vote in the Senate, but some of that may be rectified in conference. Further, contra a lot of liberal bloggers, I think the right choice was made yesterday in regards to killing Brownback's autodealer exemption and the Volcker Rule together. I may not like the fact that the Volcker Rule wasn't even allowed a vote, but the Brownback amendment was truly insidious.
That said, the Republicans may have unintentionally handed us a perfect weapon to bash them in November. The republicans went against car dealers to benefit Wall Street. It's that simple. It's an amazingly stupid short time move to prevent a vote, but if that doesn't clarify that the republicans were the ones who truly sided with wall street, I don't know what will.