Cloture Fails on financial Reform

The vote was 57-42 against cloture, with Democrats Maria Cantwell of Washington and Russ Feingold of Wisconsin voting against cloture,^* and Republicans Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, both of Maine, voted for cloture, with Specter not yet back in the Senate.

Cantwell and Feingold are right here: They have been refused a vote on a number of important amendments and other issues, most notably:

• Allowing states to enforce their own usury laws, which means that credit card consumers would no longer have their interest rates driven by the laws of South Dakota and Delaware.
• Putting the "Volcker Rule" into statute, forbidding banks from engaging in proprietary trading.
• A restoration of the Glass Steagall separation between commercial and investment banking.
• There are requirement that derivatives trade through public exchanges with public price discover is toothless.

It's nice that some progressives have shown that they are willing to show teeth.

With Republicans coming to realize just how loathed Wall Street is, and realizing that Blanche Lincoln's reelection driven decision to get rough on the banks has triggered a dynamic which makes the bill more extreme as time goes on, as opposed to the usual process of bills getting emasculated in the Senate.

Every day that goes by, it gets for any Republican and corporatist Democrat who is standing for reelection this year finds it harder and harder do do Wall Street's bidding.

I think that after a few more days of delay, they'll end up finding a way to break up the big banks.

^*Harry Reid voted against cloture too, but that is so he can offer a motion to reconsider, allowing for revote.