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Senate vote on financial reform set for Monday after partisan squabble

By Janet Hook
 and Michael Muskal
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After a spirited exchange with his opposite number, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on Thursday formally filed for cloture on the financial regulation bill and set 5 p.m. Monday for the procedural vote needed to bring the bill to the floor for debate.

Until then, top Democrats and Republicans will continue to negotiate their differences on the bill, hoping to find a compromise that would allow a bipartisan bill instead of a repeat of the nastiness that marked the debate over healthcare insurance.

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The battle over financial overhaul is different than the healthcare fight, which was heavily partisan from the beginning and quickly went downhill as voters increasingly showed their annoyance with the plan and lawmakers in general. This time, polls show voters see Wall Street as the enemy in these tough economic times.

That – and the fact that Democrats will need Republican help to break any filibuster -- has helped spur talks between the parties represented by the top members of the Banking Committee: Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) and Richard Shelby (R-Ala.).

But while those talks continue, the public face of the debate continued in what Reid, of Nevada, described as the “kabuki dance” as passing legislation.

‘My friends on the other side of the aisle are betting on failure,” Reid said. “Healthcare was not Obama’s Waterloo. Maybe they want to make this his Waterloo.’

“I’m only asking for permission to get on the bill,” Reid said as his counterpart, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kent.), objected. McConnell, who has opposed some the provisions in the bill -- including a $50-billion industry-supported fund to deal with failed institutions -- objected, arguing that the Senate should wait for the bipartisan talks to reach a conclusion.

“The talks are going on and they should continue,” McConnell said.

Reid then presented his cloture motion.
-- Janet Hook in Washington and Michael Muskal in Los Angeles

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Nation Now
Janet Hook

Janet Hook covered national politics for the Los Angeles Times until October 2021. She returned to the Washington bureau in 2018 after spending eight years covering politics and Congress for the Wall Street Journal. Her first stint with The Times was in 1995-2010 covering Congress and politics. She was a fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics and received the Everett Dirksen Award for reporting on Congress, the Carey McWilliams Award for political reporting and the John S. Knight Fellowship for Professional Journalists. She is a graduate of Harvard University.

Michael Muskal

As an editor and reporter, Michael Muskal covered local, national, economic and foreign issues at three newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times. He left the newspaper in 2015.

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