Updated at 9:30 a.m. Friday with comment from President Donald Trump.

WASHINGTON — A years-long push by Dallas Rep. Jeb Hensarling to roll back the far-reaching banking regulations created after the Great Recession reached a new zenith Thursday, clearing the House thanks to solid Republican support.

The chamber voted 233-186 along party lines to OK the Texan's Financial Choice Act, a nearly 600-page bill that guts the massive Dodd-Frank overhaul that Hensarling calls the "greatest imposition of regulation on our business enterprises than all other Obama-era regulations combined."

"What is most urgent is getting a regulatory life preserver to our community financial institutions," Hensarling said, before critiquing Dodd-Frank. "Ostensibly, they aimed it at Wall Street, but instead, Main Street got hit."

Bill a long shot

But if the bill is indeed that kind of life preserver — and Democrats dispute that it is — it could sink before ever becoming law.

The legislation is a decided long shot in the Senate, where some Democratic support is needed for passage. Sideshows continue to slow the GOP's agenda, as seen by the shadow cast Thursday by the blockbuster Senate committee hearing featuring fired FBI director James Comey.

Critics are unrelenting in their charge that the bill, which covers everything from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to "too big to fail," would lead to another financial crisis.

"This bill instates a business model that allows consumers to be taken advantage of without their knowledge," said Rep. Al Green, a Houston Democrat who serves on the House Financial Services Committee. "And that was the business model that created the climate for the downturn in 2008."

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said the Financial Choice Act would lead the country back to the "days of the Great Recession." (Mary Altaffer / The Associated Press)

The House action nonetheless marked a personal triumph for Hensarling, an acolyte of former Texas Sen. Phil Gramm who now leads the House Financial Services Committee.

Less than two years after being abandoned by his GOP colleagues — in a brutally public way — in his high-stakes effort to shutter the Export Import Bank of the United States, Hensarling has now crafted and shepherded to House passage a major plank of Republican policy.

And the Texan was not daunted by the long odds that the bill, as written, can become law.

Hensarling, known for pushing hard on causes some might consider quixotic, recalled that he lost five or six times before succeeding in eliminating congressional earmarks, the line-item spending requests that many assail as pork-barrel spending.

"I'm not sure anything stays totally settled in this town," he said.

His latest effort fits the GOP's keen focus on peeling back Obama-era regulations.

Many of those rollbacks have kept a narrow focus on individual rules or regulations, but the Dodd-Frank overhaul is sweeping by any measure. House Speaker Paul Ryan has described the proposal as the "crown jewel of our regulatory reform agenda."

Congratulations to Jeb Hensarling & Republicans on successful House vote to repeal major parts of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial law. GROWTH! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 9, 2017

And President Donald Trump on Friday gave Hensarling a shout-out on the bully pulpit that is his Twitter account, @realDonaldTrump.

"Congratulations to Jeb Hensarling & Republicans on successful House vote to repeal major parts of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial law," he tweeted to his 32 million followers. "GROWTH!"

Hensarling pitches his bill on a simple premise: choice.

What banks could do

Banks could opt out of many Dodd-Frank rules if they increase the amount of money set aside for emergencies. Or they could keep the status quo. It's unclear how banks would react, but the Congressional Budget Office found that the decision could depend on the size of the institution.

Community banks would be more likely to take the deal, the budget office said. But bigger banks, which have already spent huge sums to comply with Dodd-Frank, probably would not.

The Texan, who counts the banking industry among his big donors, has wielded that fact as a cudgel against charges of a Wall Street giveaway. And John Heasley of the Texas Bankers Association said the effort would free up lending options for Texans, particularly in rural areas.

"This bill is a huge step in the right direction to let community banks become healthy with less regulation," Heasley said.

But the bill isn't just about choice.

The bill would give banks renewed ability to make certain risky financial bets. It would reduce the number of stress tests given by regulators. It would change how large, failing institutions are handled by the government.

"House Republicans are pushing a dangerous, Wall Street-first bill that would drag us back to the days of the Great Recession," said Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the House's top Democrat.

Consumer protections

The bill also would rein in the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a Wall Street watchdog that Hensarling has described as akin to "tyranny." That element is a particular point of contention, given that Democrats tout the bureau for giving consumers nearly $12 billion in relief.

There's been a spirited resistance in Washington, where Rep. Maxine Waters, the top Democrat on House Financial Services, has called the bill "rotten to the core." And there has even been pushback in Hensarling's Dallas district, where the Texas Organizing Project rallied last week.

"Maybe things seem better for Hensarling's friends and donors on Wall Street, but his constituents showed up ... to show him that we need protection from Wall Street's recklessness," said Rashd Ibrahim, a community organizer for the group.

Those dynamics complicate the bill's future, particularly since Republicans in the Senate have expressed an interest in a different approach.

Hensarling expressed optimism that he could come to terms with his counterparts on the other side of the Capitol. And if not, he said he would look to move certain components of the bill in pieces or look to the White House for help in tackling the problem.

"There's a fair amount of content within the Financial Choice Act that can also be done administratively," he said. "We're looking at all options."