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In yet another attempt to attract Republicans, Democrats appeared willing to jettison from the bill a $50 billion fund
-- financed by large banks -- that would have been used to liquidate failing firms once considered "too big to fail." The fund has been one of the main targets of GOP criticism. Democrats said the time had come to move on with the bill. "Are we going to start the debate or are we going to shut it down and continue negotiating, negotiating, negotiating?" Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, asked on ABC's "This Week" Sunday. For now, Republicans are using the only leverage they have -- the threat of 41 unified votes
-- to seek a bigger GOP imprint on the bill. The impasse reflects differences over how to contain large, interconnected financial firms and how to liquidate them when they fail. But Democrats and Republicans also differed on how to protect consumers and how to set limits on previously unregulated exotic instruments such as derivatives.
Dodd has already incorporated a number of Republican ideas into his version of the bill following negotiations with Shelby and Republican Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee. Democrats, particularly liberals, have become increasingly worried that a compromise with Shelby will limit their ability to amend the bill during floor debate. Dodd tried to reassure them. "We can't take care of everything in the bill," he said, referring to his talks with Shelby, R-Ala. "Obviously our colleagues will want to be heard." Shelby said on ABC's "Good Morning America" that he and Dodd have a meeting scheduled for early afternoon, just hours ahead of the procedural vote. He also said he believes the two sides ultimately will agree on a bill. "I believe we're going to get a good bill," Shelby said. He said he wants a bill that's going to "put to bed forever the idea that you're going to bail out somebody." "If they want to trade with their own money, with their own resources, is one thing," Shelby said. "But the idea of ... believing the taxpayers will bail them out, that's a mistake. Both sides are together on that." "I think that, conceptually, we're very close together," the senator said of negotiations with Dodd. But Shelby also said the bill that emerged from the banking panel had "too many loopholes, and we're trying to tighten it up."
[Associated
Press;
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