There’s word that the Merkley-Levin amendment — which would ban banks and bank holding companies from engaging in high-risk proprietary trading, force additional capital requirements on any nonbank financial institution which engages in such speculative trading, and prohibits any financial firm from packaging asset-backed securities to their clients and then take the opposite side of the deal — may also need 60 votes to pass.

The Senate Banking Committee basically passed the Dodd draft with almost no work done on it. So that meant that Senators would get a crack at it on the floor. And the biggest victory in this entire process has been the promise on the part of the Democratic leadership not to put in artificial 60-vote thresholds for every amendment. With a majority-vote standard, Senators knew they were getting a fair shake to shape the bill. And under the watchful eye of advocates who can easily paint any vote to the public as a case of putting the interests of banks over the people, Senators were forced to vote in the interests of their constituents. And that has been very beneficial.