Harkin sees GOP opposition to financial reform bill weakening

Despite threatening to filibuster a financial reform bill, Senate Republican are backtracking as they realize they are on the wrong side of the issue, Sen. Tom Harkin said Thursday, and predicted that in the end they will join majority Democrats to pass the bill.

“Their resistance seems to be weakening,” Harkin said in a conference call with reporters. “The ‘Party of No' is waking up to the fact that Americans overwhelmingly say ‘yes' to a crackdown on Wall Street.”

They're reading the polls, the Iowa Democrat said, and those who are up for re-election “don't want to be on the wrong side of the issue.”

Harkin said he believes the Senate can pass the financial reform package within a week or two. It helps that the president is engaged much earlier in the process than during the health care debate, Harkin said.

“We need his voice, the bully pulpit of the president out there let people know what's at stake -- the fact that Republicans are siding with Wall Street and trying to gut at every turn everything we're trying to do to have meaningful reform

Harkin is looking for a reform package that includes limits on derivatives, which he voted for as part of the Ag Committee package Wednesday. In addition, he wants to require investors to have more capital backing their investments and separate depository banks from investment houses so those involved in derivative and credit swaps cannot get lines of credit from the Federal Reserve system.

Harkin also called for a “strong, truly independent consumer protection agency to guard against rip-offs and abuses in mortgages, credit cards, payday loans and other financial products.”

He wants to prevent any more taxpayer bailouts of “too big to fail banks.”

“Business as usual is not acceptable, certainly not for hardworking families that have suffered because of Wall Street abuses,” he said. “Over the last two years, tens of millions of American have lost their nest eggs, jobs or homes as a direct consequence of run amok recklessness and greed on Wall Street.”

Congress could learn some lessons from the market crash of 1929 and the tough regulations President Franklin Roosevelt implement, Harkin said.

“This led to decades of shared economic prosperity unprecedented in our nation's history,” he said.

In the end, Harkin said, after fighting the reforms at every turn, Republicans will vote for the bill “to show the American people they are for cracking down on Wall Street.”

“Be aware of those games,” he said.