The House passed the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2009 today in a 237-192 roll call vote. That’s not quite the end of the matter though.
There’s still a nightmare scenario for Democrats: An unforeseen reneging by one of the three Republicans who helped shape the final compromise on the legislation could leave them a vote shy. And at this point, they have few if any means of changing the legislation.
But the Democratic authors of the legislation — House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, and Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd — have both implied that the deal is done.
Frank told reporters last night that the House would not proceed to the bill, as they did today, unless they’d received the proper assurances from the Senate that the legislation would certainly pass.
Sounds like a done deal, but with the Republicans, you never know for sure.
Meanwhile, Elena Kagan sailed through her confirmation hearings.
On the military issue, the strong support that Kagan has received from Harvard graduates now serving in war zones provides a strong rebuttal to any argument that Kagan is “anti-military.” On the constitutional issues receiving the most focus–abortion, gun owners’ rights, the scope of Congress’s authority under the Commerce Clause–Kagan acknowledged the Court’s existing precedents. And on interpreting the Constitution, she set forth an approach that acknowledges the relevance of “original intent” but leaves room for other considerations such as precedent and the principles embodied in the Court’s precedent. (It will be hard for Republicans to attack this approach in view of Senator Sessions’ statements that “originalism has its limitations” and that “each theory has its limitations.”)
And both Democratic and Republican Senators said that Kagan was more forthcoming than previous nominees.
The immediate impact of this hearing will be Kagan’s confirmation as a Justice.
We may not know how good she’ll be for a few years, but for the president this has already been a good week.
Also, there’s pie.
