Obama to pitch Wall Street reform in New York City

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President Obama, engaged in a fight for financial regulatory reform embodying many of the dynamics of the healthcare debate, will return to New York City’s Cooper Union this week for another address on “Wall Street reform.’’

This is the place where candidate Obama rolled out a regulatory reform platform in his campaign for president, in March of 2008.

‘’Under Republican and Democratic administrations, we failed to guard against practices that all too often rewarded financial manipulation instead of productivity and sound business practices,’’ Obama said at that Cooper Union appearance in early 2008.

“The result has been a distorted market that creates bubbles instead of steady sustainable growth, a market that favors Wall Street over Main Street but ends up hurting both.’’

Now, the Senate’s Republicans have lined up against the Democratic leadership’s plan to take a financial regulation bill to the floor this week. All 41 senators have signed on to GOP leader Mitch McConnell’s blockade -- with McConnell reprising a stance taken in the healthcare debate, calling on the Democrats to start from scratch and develop a truly bipartisan bill.

Whether that GOP blockade holds remains to be seen. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who voiced confidence over the weekend that a bill will pass, is meeting today with Maine’s Sen. Susan Collins, the last Republican to sign on to McConnell’s letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid with a show of unanimity in the GOP’s ranks on this bill.

-- Mark Silva