Today's cloture vote on Wall Street Reform failed, 57-42, with Maria Cantwell and Russ Feingold following through on their threats to block consideration of the final bill--Cantwell because her Glass-Steagall amendment with McCain wasn't considered of a large loophole in the derivatives reform (see updates), and Feingold because the bill doesn't have serious banking reform. Here's his statement on today's cloture vote.
"After thirty years of giving in to the wishes of Wall Street lobbyists, Congress needs to finally enact tough reforms to prevent Wall Street from driving our economy into the ditch again. We need to eliminate the risk posed to our economy by ‘too big to fail’ financial firms and to reinstate the protective firewalls between Main Street banks and Wall Street firms. Unfortunately, these key reforms are not included in the bill. The test for this legislation is a simple one - whether it will prevent another financial crisis. As the bill stands, it fails that test. Ending debate on the bill is finishing before the job is done."
As it stands, the bill has some decent consumer protections, and makes some good, incremental reforms. But it doesn't get at the problem of the too-big-to-fail banks and really curtail the structural problems in the big banks.
But the cloture vote failure is also a reflection of the chaotic management of the bill and amendments. David Dayen writes about that:
Basically, Harry Reid tried to line up a cloture vote today to end debate, and he got buy-off from the center-right, with Ben Nelson and Susan Collins agreeing to vote for it. But the haphazard nature of the amendments process, with Republicans blocking consumer-friendly strengthening amendments at the last minute, has made some Democrats furious. Reid tried to set up a few amendment votes before cloture, but Carl Levin objected because the Merkley-Levin amendment (the Volcker rule) wasn’t among them. The Democrats took it offline, heading to a caucus meeting to figure this out. They are expected back at 3:15, though who knows.
In the meantime, Maria Cantwell, one of those frustrated Democrats who has been stonewalled on her amendment to restore Glass-Steagall protections to the bill, officially says she is a no on cloture at the moment. Cantwell probably has a half-dozen allies in that opinion, at a minimum. And this is why you haven’t seen a cloture vote today.
Most of these progressive amendments that the GOP is blocking from a vote (and they are doing that, objecting to unanimous consent for consideration of the amendments) are likely to have majority support – that’s why the GOP is blocking them. And without them, you have a decent bill (especially if the derivatives piece hangs on for dear life) but nothing transformative and not nearly enough to prevent another financial meltdown....
Senate Democrats . . . feel abused by the leadership and want a fair hearing for their amendments. Levin and Jeff Merkley even went to the extraordinary step of attaching their amendment as a second-degree amendment to a vote that will happen post-cloture, which would exempt car dealers from the federal consumer protection bureau’s oversight.
The process has left many progressive Senators frustrated and angry, though all but Cantwell and Feingold gave in and voted for cloture. If Cantwell and Feingold actions means that leadership has to figure out how some of the strengthening amendments get votes, and ultimately strengthens the bill, it's worth it.
Update: Great tweet from Roosevelt Institute, financial reform, econofinance blogger Mike Konczal:
FYI: The FDIC insurance you enjoy was a result of the progressives threatening to kill #1933finreg until they got their FDIC amendment.
Update 2: In a floor speech just now, Maria Cantwell said that her objection to the bill wasn't based on her dissed amendment, but on a loophole in the derivatives part that doesn't penalize derivatives trades outside of the clearinghouses, and she's insisting that the language ensure that all derivative trades are made through clearinghouses.
