The President just signed the legislative repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell at the Department of the Interior in Washington. Margaret Witt, the Seattle native who was reinstated to the military in one of the last DADT trials, made it to the bill signing. It was a gathering of incredible people who put their lives [...]

That cloture vote is still open at the moment, but the Senate will move to advance the health care bill today. They already have close to 70 votes in favor. With that kind of support, passage is assured. But while there’s no question of that, other questions abound: • Will the Senate allow amendments? As [...]

A brief on what happened last night in Congress. As you may know, the Senate was scheduled to wrap up work on the food safety bill last night, though Harry Reid braced everyone for late night votes. I guess he lost his nerve, and now two votes will carry over into morning. The substitute amendment [...]

Harry Reid in this morning’s Politico hints that some accommodation would be made for Maria Cantwell to get the derivatives loophole tightened as a condition for her support. Reid would need to work out some sort of agreement to allow consideration of amendments that Cantwell, Brown and others have deemed as necessary before they can [...]

The Wall Street reform debate continues on the Senate floor right now, with a cloture vote still expected at 2:30pm ET. The Democratic leadership hopes they can thread the needle and get the one Republican they need so they don’t have to address Maria Cantwell’s legitimate concern about derivatives loopholes. It seems they just don’t [...]

After a few more amendments to the Wall Street reform bill this evening (and a defeat for the Whitehouse amendment to allow states to cap interest rates on credit cards), Harry Reid set up a vote for cloture for today. He expects Arlen Specter to be on hand, and to vote for cloture, so that [...]

Voting is happening right now on a cloture vote for financial reform. Harry Reid announced that “I don’t know if we’ll ever arrive” at a unanimous consent agreement on the amendments which Senate Democrats wanted for a vote, so he said “let’s get this cloture thing out of the way.” It’s incredibly unclear whether or [...]

I’ve been using a #lordofthefliesonthesenatefloor hashtag to discuss the Wall Street reform bill today, and I think it accurately describes what’s going on. Basically, Harry Reid tried to line up a cloture vote today to end debate, and he got buy-off from the center-right, with Ben Nelson and Susan Collins agreeing to vote for it. [...]

Senate Democrats are seriously unhappy with how Wall Street reform has unfolded. The unkempt nature of the amendments process virtually assured this. Some amendments would get strung along until the end, and ultimately squeezed by both Republican obstruction and a leadership timeline. And they are less inclined to vote for cloture without their amendments getting [...]

Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) told reporters today that he was “not inclined” to support a vote for cloture on the Wall Street reform bill unless he gets a vote on the Volcker rule amendment authored by him and Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR). Republicans blocked consideration of the amendment, even with a super-majority 60-vote threshold with [...]

Byron Dorgan, the indefatigable financial reformer, just pulled off one hell of a move on the floor of the Senate. He has been frustrated by being unable to get a vote on his amendment to ban naked credit default swaps, derivatives where the buyer and seller have no physical stake (essentially gambling bets on someone [...]