Sen. Elizabeth Warren tried to take control of the debate with a Tuesday morning press conference in which she outlined plans to fight the White House-backed legislation. | AP Photo Senate advances bank deregulation bill as Democrats break ranks

Sixteen Senate Democrats ignored warnings from progressives and joined with Republicans on Tuesday to advance a wide-ranging deregulation bill that lawmakers are expected to pass in the coming days.

The Senate voted to begin debate on the bill in a 67-32 vote, opening the door to the first major overhaul of banking regulations since Democrats enacted the Dodd-Frank law in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.


A deep rift between Democrats over banking industry oversight will be on full display on the Senate floor over the coming days, exposing to voters a clash of progressives and centrists that has been building for several years.

"The people in Congress may have forgotten the crash 10 years ago, but I guarantee that people across this country have not forgotten the pain that these giant banks caused,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said as she sought to rally her colleagues against the White House-backed bill. “They do not want to see Congress move toward deregulating these banks.”

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The core team of moderate Democrats that has been working to pass the legislation for years fought back Tuesday, calling out critics who they said were exaggerating the impact of the legislation.

“I am not going to let this legislative history get papered with misstatements about this bill,” Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) said, vowing to “make sure that our bill is accurately discussed."

The bill — one of the few important bipartisan pieces of legislation to move through Congress — would peel back key parts of Dodd-Frank, the 2010 law that was one of former President Barack Obama's signature achievements, while leaving most of its regulations intact.

It has several elements aimed at scaling back lending rules. They include: relaxed mortgage regulations for small banks; broad exemptions from oversight for regional banks with up to $250 billion in assets; a mandate that the Federal Reserve tailor its rules for big banks; and easier capital and liquidity requirements for a number of the nation's largest lenders.

The bill includes a handful of consumer protections, such as a requirement that credit reporting companies like Equifax provide free credit monitoring to members of the military — a proposal that has alarmed conservatives who warn that it would expose the firms to lawsuits.

Democrats who helped draft the bill argue that the legislation is an overdue recalibration of Dodd-Frank that would help make it easier for small and midsize banks to provide credit, particularly in rural areas.

For those senators driving the legislation, including Heitkamp, Jon Tester (D-Mont.), Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.) and Mark Warner (D-Va.), it is an opportunity to show that things can still get done in a bitterly divided Congress.

The senators on Tuesday praised Senate Banking Chairman Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) for working with them to make the legislation a reality, despite the fact that many in the GOP want to enact more sweeping rollbacks of financial regulations.

“This is old-school legislating,” Heitkamp said.

But for Warren, it was an example of everything that’s wrong with Washington.

She accused her colleagues of backing the legislation because of years of sustained bank lobbying in the wake of Dodd-Frank’s enactment.

To make her point, Warren said she had more than a dozen amendments ready to go, and she previewed the topics she would focus on in the debate: consumers, big banks and the broader "history of deregulation efforts in Congress.”

Warren's amendments — if she has the opportunity to offer them — could prove to be tough votes for Democrats who support the underlying legislation and don’t want to throw off the political balance among its co-sponsors.

The Massachusetts progressive will likely fall short of being able to stop the bill, though most Senate Democrats joined with her Tuesday to oppose moving forward with the legislation.

A potential 2020 candidate for president, Warren said she was “enormously frustrated on behalf of the American people.”

“The importance of fighting now is to stop this bill,” Warren said. “But it’s also to make clear we’re not just going to lay down for the big financial institutions."

Warner, of Virginia, said the bill’s co-sponsors were preparing to unveil additions to the bill via a so-called manager’s amendment. The Democrat said it would include new student loan safeguards and other pieces of legislation with bipartisan support in the House and the Senate, though he said the proposals were unlikely to scramble the politics around the package.

"Those who were for it are going to still be for it," he said. "Those who were opposed to it will probably still be opposed to it."

It was not immediately clear how long lawmakers would agree to spend debating the bill or to what extent they would allow amendments.

A December committee vote on the bill took several hours as Warren, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and other critics of the legislation offered amendments that the bill’s co-sponsors rejected.

In a brief interview Tuesday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said there was not yet a time agreement for the debate. Tester said it could take until next Monday to finish work on the bill.

Schumer, who revealed Friday that he would oppose the bill, publicly stayed on the sidelines for months as the legislation made its way to the floor.

He declined Tuesday morning to say why he was opposing it.

"You'll hear me later," he said.

