President Obama’s plan to limit the amount of risk big US banks can take could well die in the Senate if the measure isn’t seen as bipartisan enough by Chris Dodd, the retiring Banking Committee chair, and Senate Republicans. “He wants to end his career with an important regulatory reform bill and he wants to make the bill bipartisan,” a staffer tells dealReporter of Dodd. “He is not going to risk bipartisan support to make the White House happy.”
Sen. Richard Shelby, the committee’s ranking Republican, says the more Obama seeks to “politicize” the so-called Volcker rule, the less support it will find with the GOP—which, after the election of Scott Brown, now has enough senators to keep the Democrats from forcing a broad regulatory reform package through.
(More Paul Volcker stories.)