Geithner: Both sides in Congress want a strong Wall Street bill

Geithner spoke just hours before President Barack Obama is set to deliver an address in New York on the need to reform the nation’s financial and banking regulations.

{mosads}”I think we will, yes. I mean I — again, I’ve spent a huge amount of time up there on both sides of the aisle, a lot of time with Republicans, too,” he said in an interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America” program. “And people I’ve talked to want to be for a strong bill, not just — everybody says they’re for reform now, George, because you can’t be against reform given what happened.”

The secretary’s comments signal that more Republicans are now willing to support the current proposal being debated in the Senate after both sides seemed far apart on the bill last week, suggesting that the bill could spark a battle similar to the one over the massive healthcare reform bill.

Geithner has spent much time over the last several weeks meeting with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, including some centrist Republicans whom the White House believes could back the bill introduced by Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.)

All Republicans had signed a letter noting their opposition to the Wall Street legislation last week — many of them have said the bill would permit future bailouts of large financial firms. But Geithner pushed back against that charge.

Asked if the government will never again have to bail out big banks, Geithner said “Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And that’s very important for people to understand, because you can’t run a system in which private investors or their executives can take risk on the expectation the government is going to come in and protect them.”

All House Republicans voted against that went through the lower
chamber last year. Senate Republican opposition to the bill, so far, has prevented the bill from coming to the floor.

But now that more GOP lawmakers, including the ranking Republican on the Banking Committee Richard Shelby (Ala.), have said that a deal is close, Geithner refrained from blaming the party for the delay.

“There’s enormous resistance, still, across the U.S. financial community and by large institutions around the world to what we’re trying to work through,” he said. “That’s why it’s been so hard to get this done, because people recognize this is very tough. It’s going to transform the role of our financial system in the economy and make it much more stable, give people much more protection.”