Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), a centrist Democrat who’d been wavering on financial reform, just cast a “No” on the Senate’s cloture vote to start debating a bill that would rewrite the rules of our financial markets. Nelson’s vote is likely to kill Senate Democrats’ attempts to immediately begin haggling over the bill, largely crafted by Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) in the banking committee. The Democrats, who lack a supermajority, needed at least one of 41 Senate Republicans to vote “Yes” in order to begin discussions on the Senate floor. Dodd alluded to some disagreement among Senate Democrats last week, as did Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) today in remarks with reporters. Mother Jones previously reported that Nelson could be among the Democratic hold-outs, given his centrist stance and the fact that he was on a shortlist of lawmakers visited by Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner last week, who has recently met personally with lawmakers on the fence on financial reform.
Nelson’s opposition is sure to give Democrats headaches. This winter, the Nebraska senator made headlines for holding up health care reform talks and for trying to secure a provision in the bill benefiting his home state. On financial reform, Nelson had lately backed a provision in the finance bill that exempted companies who’ve previously traded derivatives from retroactively posting collateral on their existing derivatives trades, the Wall Street Journal reported. The exemption was supported by Warren Buffett, the billionaire Nebraska business guru who feared that without it, his company, Berkshire Hathaway, would lose a substantial amount of money. However, the exemption was killed earlier today, the Journal reported, signaling a major setback for Nelson and Buffett. The removal of that small provision could have prompted Nelson to vote against cloture this evening.
The votes are still being tallied on the Senate floor for the cloture vote, but without agreement on the Democratic side, the effort is likely to fail.
