With the Dodd-Frank Act it was written; with the interchange vote it was sealed. Republicans have virtually no chance of rolling back the financial reform bill, neither in whole as they have vowed to do, nor in part.
Any hope of softening the blow to banks now rests in the hands of regulators, who have just begun the rulemaking process prescribed in the legislation.
Congress isn't reversing course now. For the GOP to achieve that, Democrats would have to lose control of both the Senate and the White House, which doesn't look likely to happen. Even if the Republicans were to find an electable candidate for president, and take enough Senate seats to get the 60 votes necessary for blocking a filibuster by Democrats, the government still, as a whole, would have to swim against the strong historical tendancy to keep laws in place once they've been passed.
For proof of Congressional resistance to do-overs, consider Sen. Richard Durbin's successful efforts in June to block a bill that would have delayed the interchange rules he pushed through in Dodd-Frank.
The Illinois Democrat beat back a huge lobbying campaign from banks and significant bipartisan support to postpone implementation of the fee cap on interchange. The industry's only hope now on the issue is that regulators will somehow soften their interpretation of the directives in the legislation.
Republicans may be more successful in targeting the bill's new derivatives rules, which are so complicated that it would be easy to stir up angst over the potential for negative unintended consequences. But even this is a long shot.
Once a law is in place for any significant period of time, it is extremely difficult to radically alter it. What was once controversial becomes accepted, and Congress doesn't like to change its mind, even when it changes parties.
President Obama can reinforce the staying power of a key feature of the bill, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, by nominating an agency director-a critical step if the CFPB is to start writing rules when it formally assumes authority on July 21. He hadn't by press time. But it will still be a long, hard slog for the GOP to try deconstructing Dodd-Frank. There's a reason it took the banking industry more than 70 years to undo Glass-Steagall.
