Brian Beutler May 5, 2010, 6:37 PM

With the passage of an amendment this afternoon to change the way the Democrats’ proposed Wall Street reforms would wind down failed financial institutions, the debate is truly, finally, on. Now all that’s left is for Democrats to blast through 100 or so separate amendments in the next few days to meet their goal of finishing up work on the bill by early next week.

That wouldn’t be so hard under ideal circumstances: Democratic and Republican negotiators could sift through the pile, eliminate redundancies, toss out non-germane proposals, combine others into a managers amendment, and hold up or down votes on the remaining batch.

But in this highly partisan atmosphere, a single objection at a key moment could set things back for days, and that would leave Democratic leadership forced to choose between pushing back their deadline, or retracting their promise to allow an open amendment process.

Principals on both sides of the aisle are still hopeful that they can finish up work on the bill in an orderly manner.

“You’re predicting a problem I don’t think’s going to exist,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told me this evening when I asked him whether time might run out before Republicans were satisfied.

“If members won’t take an inordinate amount of time, and will be brief in their arguments and get a vote, we can deal with a lot of these issues,” said Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT), chair of the Banking Committee, who’s managing the bill on the floor.

“I’m going to start with a positive note,” Dodd added. “Let’s not be negative.”

Still to be ironed out, though, are significant differences between the parties (and among Democrats) over issues like consumer protection, and derivatives; and at least one White House-opposed proposal to force an audit of the Federal Reserve, which could come to a vote tomorrow.

That presages a busy next few days.

Audit the Fed, Bailout, Chris Dodd, Democrats, Filibuster, Financial Reform, Mitch McConnell, Republicans, Senate, White House