Durbin leads on defending Wall Street bill

WASHINGTON, Jan. 12 (UPI) -- Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin plans to use his position on an appropriations subcommittee to keep Republicans from gutting financial reform, aides say.

Backers of Dodd-Frank, the Wall Street reform, tell The Hill Durbin, D-Ill., will take over the issue from former Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd, D-Conn., who retired.

Durbin got an amendment on interchange fees between banks into the bill despite strong opposition from credit card companies and banks.

"Durbin played a pivotal role in winning some of the most important Wall Street reform debates over consumer protections, including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau," a senior Senate Democratic aide said.

At a news conference last week, Durbin said he was worried about Republican efforts to gut the law by defunding the Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

"There are many Republicans who did not support Wall Street reform who believe that they can starve the SEC into submission by refusing to put enough people, personnel -- lawyers and accountants and others -- monitoring the activities of the exchanges," he said.

As chairman of Appropriations Financial Services and General Government subcommittee, Durbin pledged to fight to give the agencies funding to enforce the law.