Democrats Break Financial Reform Filibuster

Congress is all but guaranteed to pass the most sweeping financial regulatory reform since the Great Depression this afternoon. In the early session this morning, the Senate voted 60-38 to end debate on the Dodd-Frank bill, setting up a final vote that is scheduled for 2pm this afternoon. Republicans could delay it until tomorrow night, but they probably won't, according to Reuters.

Scott Brown, Olympia Snowe, and Susan Collins all crossed party lines to end the Republican filibuster, Bloomberg reports. No other Republicans are expected to vote for the bill. "It creates vast new bureaucracies with little accountability," complained Richard Shelby, who initially worked on the bill with Chris Dodd. But Dodd countered that Americans "expect us to respond to a situation that brought us to the brink of financial disaster. And this is our best effort to do so. It's not a perfect effort, I know that."
(More Chris Dodd stories.)