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April 28, 2010 at 08:00 PM
Sen. Christopher Dodd says he believes he can get S. 3217, the Restoring American Financial Stability Act, to come up for a vote on the Senate floor.
Senate Republicans have agreed to let debate on the bill begin, Dodd, D-Conn., who oversaw the drafting of the bill, said in a statement.
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said she still has concerns about the bill but wants debate on the bill to proceed.
Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., who has led Republican efforts to work on the bill, put out a statement indicating that he thought talks about the bill had stalled.
“It is now my belief that further negotiations will not produce additional results,” Shelby said.
Members of the Senate earlier voted 56-42 today to keep S. 3217 from coming up for a vote.
Democratic supporters of S. 3217, which was developed under the supervision of Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, need 60 votes to keep Republicans from blocking consideration of the bill by engaging in an endless round of debate, or filibuster.
Senate Majority Harry Leader, D-Nev., has asked the Senate to vote on a separate cloture motion, or measure to avert the possibility of a filibuster, every day this week. A cloture motion needs 60 votes to pass. Up till now, all 41 Republicans in the Senate and Sen. Earl Benjamin Nelson, D-Neb., have been voting against the motions.
Reid has been using the Republican votes against the cloture motions as evidence that they are enemies of financial services reform. The votes show that “Republicans Prefer Secrecy And Business As Usual Over An Open Debate On Wall Street Reform,” according to the headline of a press release Reid’s staffers put out in response to the third failed cloture motion vote.
