Obama's financial overhaul passes US Senate - Summary

Washington - The biggest overhaul of US financial regulation in seven decades was approved Thursday by the Senate, ending months of debate in the chamber over how to rein in Wall Street practices that helped plunge the world into recession last year.The Senate voted 59-39 for the financial reform bill, a top priority for US President Barack Obama. The legislation aims to tighten government regulations in the wake of the devastating 2008 financial crisis.Obama called it "one important step that will strengthen our economy" and prevent another crisis in the future.The success came after two weeks of tough haggling between Obama's Democrats and opposition Republicans, who still mostly oppose the bill as government overreach into the private sector.The Senate's version will still have to be reconciled in the coming weeks with a different bill approved last year by the lower House of Representatives."We have still got some work to do," Obama said, urging lawmakers to ignore last-minute lobbying by the financial industry, which has mostly opposed the reforms.The Senate legislation includes strengthened oversight of lightly regulated sectors of Wall Street including hedge funds and derivatives trading, and creates a consumer financial protection agency within the Federal Reserve.The bill gives the US government the authority to wind down failing financial firms - a form of managed bankruptcy designed to prevent the kind of systemic fallout that followed Lehman Brothers' bankruptcy in 2008.Passing financial reform would mark the second major domestic success for Obama this year, after Congress approved a wide-reaching health care overhaul in March.Public anger against hundreds of billions of dollars in Wall Street bailouts during the crises of the last two years have put pressure on both parties to cooperate to prevent a similar crisis from recurring.Despite their reservations, many Republicans were careful not to outright oppose reforms that are popular with the public. Obama sought to paint the conservative, free-market opposition as weak on financial reform."This bill has good things in it, but I think there's a lot of overreach and not enough time spent on the core issues," said Republican Senator Bob Corker, a key negotiator on the bill who eventually voted against moving the debate forward.Hours ahead of the final vote, the reform package cleared its biggest procedural hurdle in a 60-40 vote. The procedural vote, which needed 60 to pass, allowed a small number of amendments to be considered before the final vote took place.The successful vote came just one day after the very same procedural motion was rejected 57-42 over the objections of most Republicans and two Democrats.Majority Democrats needed 60 votes for the procedural motion to pass and managed to bring three Republicans to their cause the second time around. Two Democrats, upset that the reforms are too weak, still voted against limiting debate.