Financial reform is back on, as David W. informed you earlier. They're in as of 5:00 today, EDT, but apparently not televised this time around.
So what's it going to take to get Brown, Collins, Grassley--or, conversely, Feingold and Cantwell? As of now, it appears that the negotiating is for the Republican votes. Ezra quoting CNBC:
The conferees will propose ending the Treasury Department’s authority to require banks to accept additional TARP funds. While this authority would sunset over time rather than end immediately, budget rules say that this would result in a savings of something like $10 billion to $11 billion.
Additional FDIC premiums also are being considered to bring in $3.5 billion, bringing the total closer to the $19 billion the lawmakers sought to raise with the bank tax. Republicans are expected to accept this deal. The biggest banks would be subject to the higher FDIC fees, but not hedge funds, since they are not part of the FDIC system. On the other hand, smaller banks — exempted from the fee under the current bill — that operate under the FDIC system would likely find themselves footing the bill.
So rather than a bank tax, which Scott Brown worried would take capital out of the banking system, we're going to drop part of the TARP program that was ... putting capital into the banking system. And rather than making big banks and big hedge funds foot the bill, FDIC fees will be hiked so that small banks have to pay in but hedge funds don't.
In other words, since it's TARP money, it's on the taxpayers. And small banks. Huzzah.
Still no definitive word on whether Cantwell is on board now with the bill, or whether she and Feingold were looped into the negotiations around this reopened conference. Chances are pretty good that they weren't. Their issues were focused on ending too big to fail, the Volcker Rule, and the derivatives reform.
It seems unlikely that Dodd would open up any of these other complex and settled titles for more tinkering. For one thing, as Beutler points out in the TPM story linked above, they don't have much time this week. Thursday and Friday are likely not going to be Senate business days, Durbin has said: "It becomes difficult because at least from I think it's 10-4 on Thursday, Senator Byrd will lie in state [in the Capitol], and then on Friday there's a funeral in West Virginia."
