After weeks of wrangling, the US Senate has approved the most sweeping overhaul of the country's financial regulatory system since the Great Depression of the 1930s, handing a major political victory to President Barack Obama.
Obama's financial reform package aimed at curbing Wall Street excesses blamed for fuelling the 2008 global financial crisis was passed by 59 to 39 votes in the Senate last night.
The ruling Democratic party, which was struggling to get enough votes to get the financial reforms bill through the 100-member Senate for the past three weeks, suddenly found the required votes, with several members of the opposition Republican joining nearly all Democrats in voting for the package.
The bill now goes to a House-Senate conference to work out differences between the versions of the bill in the House of Representatives and Senate.
The Democrats are now hoping to send the bill to Obama's desk to be signed into law by July 4. Obama, who was quick to claim victory, said that "over the last year, the financial industry has repeatedly tried to end this reform with hordes of lobbyists and millions of dollars in ads."
"And when they couldn't kill it, they tried to water it down with special interest loopholes and carve-outs aimed at undermining real change," Obama said in his brief remarks at the Rose Garden of the White House, as he claimed victory over the strong Wall Street lobby that was against the bill.
"Today, I think it's fair to say that these efforts have failed. Today, Democrats and a handful of Republicans in the Senate have voted to break the filibuster and allow a final debate and vote on financial reform that will protect consumers, protect our economy, and hold Wall Street accountable," he said, amid national anger at wall Street.
Obama said his goal is not to punish the banks, but to protect the larger economy and American people from the kind of upheavals that they have seen in the past few years. "And today's action was a major step forward in achieving that goal," he said.
Commenting on the development, Politico said: "For Obama, adding a financial reform bill this summer to a health reform bill passed earlier this year gives him a powerful platform to argue that Democrats should be kept in power in both houses of Congress this fall - and that he should be returned to the White House in 2012."
