Wall Street Reform Scorecard: Senators Ranked - Main Street or Wall Street?

A national public interest
advocacy organization compared a series of
key votes of U.S. Senators during consideration of the Restoring
American
Financial Stability Act this month and found that, while 11 received
perfect
public interest scores, nearly half voted with Wall Street CEOs more
often than
with their Main Street consumer constituents.

The Senator Scorecard from the U.S. Public Interest
Research Group
charted Senators' votes on ten key amendments and on the final bill,
approved
on May 20. Among the amendments considered were the following:

• The
  Shelby (R-AL) amendment to severely weaken the proposed Consumer
  Financial
  Protection Bureau (Defeated, Public Interest Vote = No).
• The
  Chambliss (R-GA) amendment to weaken the bill's shadow markets
  derivatives
  reforms. (Defeated, Public Interest Vote = No).
• The
  Carper (D-DE) amendment to weaken authority of state Attorneys General
  to
  protect the public. (Approved, Public Interest Vote = No).

"Looking at
how a Senator votes on one final passage vote isn't enough," said Ed
Mierzwinski, Consumer Program Director for U.S. PIRG. "The Senate spent
weeks taking critical votes on whether to improve the bill for Main
Street, or,
at the behest of powerful Wall Street lobbyists, to eviscerate reforms.
Our
scorecard examines important votes for consumers and taxpayers."

The legislation
must now be reconciled with a similar bill approved by the House in
December.

For example, both
bills include an independent consumer agency and while the House bill
would
carve out car dealers from its oversight, the Senate bill would subject
the
agency to "paralysis-by-analysis" requirements. The Senate bill's
reforms of the derivatives markets are stronger, but Wall Street
lobbyists are
lined up to weaken them.

"We will
urge the House and Senate conference committee to take the strongest
reforms
from each bill, so that Main Street consumers who have lost millions of
jobs
and trillions of dollars in home equity and retirement savings will be
protected from future meltdowns caused by greedy Wall Street bankers,"
concluded Mierzwinski.

Click here to see
the Scorecard.

Click
here for the
Amendment Voting Guide U.S. PIRG issued prior to the votes.