The Senate passed their cloture vote, as expected, on the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory reform bill. The vote was 60-38, with Scott Brown, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins supporting from the Republican side, and Russ Feingold opposing. Senatus says that the final vote will be taken up this afternoon, but I haven’t confirmed that. (UPDATE: It’s confirmed that passage will happen today, around 2pm ET.)

The bill is a landmark consumer protection and anti-predatory lending bill. It goes fairly far in that direction, though not quite far enough – the auto dealer exemption is a disappointment. But the mortgage reforms are actually pretty solid, and I have confidence that the consumer protection bureau can have an impact on ending a culture where certain predators in the financial services industry make their profits largely based on how well they can trick people.

As for the Wall Street part of the Wall Street reform bill, the public has no sense whatsoever that it will work. More important, most experts don’t either. Simon Johnson has begun to convince himself that the Kanjorski amendment will cause a break-up of systemically risky big firms and be a whip to keep the mega-banks in line. I have less confidence that the systemic risk council, made up of the same people who missed the crisis the first time, will act in that manner.

The Kanjorski amendment is nice, but it’s not the meat of the bill. The meat of the bill involves empowering regulators, who didn’t do their job the last time, to have the tools to do their job this time. They will have an Office of Financial Research to collect near-real-time data on Wall Street. They will have “funeral plans” from the banks telling them how to unwind them if they get into trouble. They will have resolution authority allowing them to do just that (though how that extends to the international sphere, where US regulators have no authority, makes no sense to me). They will have some of the riskiest bets placed on clearinghouses and exchanges. They will have hedge funds registering with the SEC.

Hank Paulson says he would have loved to have these tools during the last crisis. Last I remember, Hank Paulson wanted carte blanche access to $700 billion dollars and gave Congress a three-page sheet of paper asking for legal indemnity and no strings attached. So the idea that FinReg is justified because Hank Paulson would have liked its powers doesn’t ring true to me.

Under the new system brought into being by this bill, regulators will have to be adept and aware to actually mitigate the next crisis. There’s little in here that would allow them to prevent it, although there’s a nod in that direction that can be built upon in future bills. The structure of Wall Street remains largely intact after this bill. Their profit margins on certain risky activities will dip slightly (the link is an important Deloitte and Touche rundown from the banks’ perspective of what the bill does), but those activities can still occur – and ultimately, that’s the problem. Wall Street remains a casino, but a slightly less profitable, slightly more regulated one.

Perhaps no bill in history faces a more important post-passage environment than FinReg. There are over 30 “studies” in the bill, which could result in very tough new rules on things like credit rating agencies, proprietary trading, capital requirements and leverage, derivatives and more. They could also result in tissue paper. Moreover, new tools for regulators only make an impact if they get used. Government has already started to work on all this. We’re going to need regulators who actually believe in their mission, to protect consumers and taxpayers, not banks. Advocates for strong reform among the public will actually have to take an interest in who sits on the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, or the head of the consumer protection bureau, or the FOMC, or a host of other positions which take on even more significance now.

The bill’s worth doing on the consumer protection piece alone. Time will tell whether it is strong enough to make much of a dent in fixing Wall Street. But the bill will also have a half-life. Bankers and their lobbyists are already finding ways around the rules. Legislation never has an end point, especially legislation like this. It must keep up with the times. We haven’t reformed the banking sector since the 1930s – in recent years we de-regulated. This bill maybe gets us up to 1985 in terms of what’s necessary. Future bills will have to take us into the 21st century and beyond.

UPDATE: Ryan Grim gets a little more specific.