These Democrats—Elizabeth Warren, Jeff Merkley, Sherrod Brown—are still fighting Wall Street.

The Senate voted Tuesday morning to start debate on the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform rollback bill, 67-32. Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Sherrod Brown of Ohio, members of the Senate Banking Committee, have dubbed it the "Bank Lobbyists Act" and have been trying to get their colleagues to recognize a simple thing: the bill jeopardizes the financial stability of banks and our economy, which are hard-fought goals of Dodd-Frank.

They got some help Monday when the Congressional Budget Office reported that the legislation would make it more likely that the government would have to bail out big banks again.

A major feature of the bill is exempting about two dozen financial companies with assets between $50 billion and $250 billion from the highest levels of regulatory scrutiny from the Federal Reserve. If passed, it would be the most substantial weakening of the regulations put in place by the 2010 Dodd-Frank law that strengthened financial regulations. The CBO report says those exemptions make it more likely a bank would collapse and lead federal officials to stabilize it with public funds. The CBO notes that this scenario is unlikely in any given year, but it says the bill makes it more probable.

This is being sold as easing restrictions on small and rural community banks. Which would be fine, if that's what it was really doing. But what it really is doing is effectively deregulating 25 of the 38 biggest banks, banks which hold about one-sixth of assets in the banking industry. It's helping foreign mega-banks, like Santander and Credit Suisse. It's deregulating some American firms, like American Express and Fifth-Third.

Beyond that, it loosens requirements for mortgage lenders under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act to collect demographic information when they originate mortgages. That helps track—and potentially prevent—racial discrimination in lending. It gets rid of consumer protections in mortgage lending, like protection from surprise insurance fees and taxes that have been shown to reduce foreclosures. It makes manufactured home builders exempt from truth in lending requirements, which makes those buyers more vulnerable to predatory lending.

All this to help "community banks" and, on the part of Democrats who are supporting it, show they can do stuff.