WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama on Tuesday secured the 60 votes he needs in the Senate to pass a sweeping overhaul of financial regulations, all but ensuring that he soon will sign into law one of his top initiatives.
With the votes in hand to overcome Republican delaying tactics, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Tuesday he hoped for final passage Thursday. The House already has passed the bill.
“This reform is good for families, it is good for businesses, it’s good for the entire economy,” Obama said as he prodded the Senate to act quickly.
Passage would represent a signature achievement for the president just four months after he signed health care legislation into law. The final vote comes amid lingering public resentment of Wall Street, but the legislation’s symbolic and political affect is likely to be diminished by anxiety across the country about jobs and the economy.
Reid as much as acknowledged that political reality Tuesday, blaming “greed on Wall Street” for the country’s economic troubles.
“It triggered the recession,” he said. “It’s what suffocated the job market and robbed trillions of dollars of people’s savings — trillions.”
Support for the bill gelled Tuesday after conservative Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska announced he would vote for the bill, after raising concerns the previous day.
Obama noted that the bill is getting backing from Republican Sens. Scott Brown of Massachusetts and Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, both of Maine. Snowe and Brown announced their support Monday.
“Three Republican senators have put politics and partisanship aside to support this reform, and I’m grateful for their decision,” Obama said as he announced his nomination of Jacob Lew to be the new director of the White House budget office.
The 2,300-page bill aims to address regulatory weaknesses blamed for the 2008 financial crisis that fueled the worst recession since the 1930s.
It gives regulators broad authority to rein in banks, limit risk-taking by financial firms and supervise previously unregulated trading. It also makes it easier to liquidate large, financially interconnected institutions, and it creates a new consumer protection bureau to guard against lending abuses.
While Democrats are ready to cast the GOP as an ally of Wall Street, Republicans have portrayed the bill as government overreach that would make lending more expensive, increase costs for consumers and hurt U.S. businesses. Republicans repeatedly and fruitlessly tried to expand the bill to include changes to government-controlled mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
“The vast majority of our members felt that it was not a step in the right direction, that it perpetuated too-big-to-fail, that it was supported by Goldman Sachs and opposed by our community banks,” Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said.
The House approved the bill last month, with just three Republicans voting in favor.
But opposition to the bill from Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, and the death of Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., created new uncertainty for the bill in the Senate.
After Collins, Snowe and Brown decided to break with their party and support the bill, passage seemed assured.
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