Dodd enters final days of last battle

For Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), passing financial regulatory
reform is bigger than cleaning up Wall Street. It’s also about proving
that the Senate can still function.

Four months after
announcing he would not seek reelection to a sixth term, Dodd’s Wall
Street reform bill is headed to a vote in the Senate as early as
Wednesday. It has been a long and frustrating journey for the
Connecticut senator, but the bill is now on track to pass the upper
chamber and be signed into law later this year.

The legislation represents the Senate’s response to the
financial crisis that swept in the worst recession in decades, and would
usher in new rules for banks, hedge funds and other players on Wall
Street.

{mosads}To hear Dodd’s take, however, the historic legislation is
less important than his showing that the Senate can still function in a
toxic political atmosphere.

“It is the Senate. We’re not
the House,” Dodd, the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, said in
an interview in his office. “There’s a reason the Senate exists. It
isn’t just to satisfy big states or small states. It’s to make sure that
full-throated debate can occur.”

“I wanted to demonstrate and prove, if to no one else but
myself, that this Senate is not on some trajectory downward that’s
irreversible,” continued Dodd, who guided the healthcare bill through
the Senate after Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) died last year.

“Even in this poisonous political environment — maybe the most poisonous one we’ve been in for a long time — I was determined to
prove you could take a complex piece of legislation, highly
controversial, and members could be heard and you could debate issues,”
Dodd said.

Wall Street reform has been far from devoid of political
gamesmanship, of course, and Dodd is a consummate political player.

He started negotiations with Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) on Wall
Street reform after reaching an impasse with Sen. Richard Shelby
(R-Ala.), his panel’s ranking member. He later cut off talks with Corker
and moved the bill through his committee on a party-line vote.

After a brutal healthcare debate that saw his party’s poll
numbers plummet, Dodd and other Democrats were happy to be on offense
against big banks on financial reform.

In April, Senate
Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) held procedural votes to open debate
on the bill for three days in a row, leading to headlines about
Republicans blocking Wall Street reform. That eventually wore the GOP
down, and a formal debate over financial reform began on the Senate
floor in early May.

Since then, however, what’s been notable about the Senate
debate on financial reform is the contrast with the healthcare fight, in
which partisan votes were the norm.

Dodd notes that
the weeks-long debate in the Senate has not featured a single filibuster
or tabling motion. The Senate has had 20 roll-call votes on the
legislation; nearly every one has seen at least a handful Republicans
and Democrats cross party lines to vote for or against a particular
measure. Some amendments have been added with broad support from both
parties. Others have divided Republicans and Democrats.

Dodd, who spoke scornfully of a political atmosphere in
which senators no longer share lunch together in the Senate dining club
and the same members speak at every weekly caucus meeting, acknowledged
the debate may get rougher in the final days, but he’s full of pride
over the last few weeks, which could mark the last time he steers a bill
through the Senate.

“While history may talk about Wall Street reform, I’m going
to feel as good watching the Senate function as I will about the
product it produced,” Dodd said in rolled-up shirt sleeves after completing
another day of debate on the bill.

Read more about The Hill’s interview with Sen. Chris Dodd in
Tuesday’s print edition.