“A major legislative victory as his party heads into midterm elections.”

“Most ambitious overhaul of financial regulation in generations”

"Obama will tout Wall Street reform to fire up voters ahead of midterm elections in November"

“The bill also caps a legislative trifecta for President Obama and Democrats on Capitol Hill, coming after the stimulus plan and health care overhaul”

MSNBC First Read "Obama agenda: A major victory": The Boston Globe's top story: "The US Senate yesterday passed a sweeping overhaul of financial regulations, getting crucial support from three New England Republicans in a vote that hands President Obama a major legislative victory as his party heads into midterm elections."

New York Daily News "Obama will tout Wall Street reform to fire up voters ahead of midterm elections in November":  President Obama takes off for a short vacation today with a major accomplishment packed in his bag - a financial overhaul that will be a major keepsake on the campaign trail. The Senate voted 60 to 39 yesterday to pass the greatest overhaul of the banking and finance systems since the Great Depression. "The American people will never again be asked to foot the bill for Wall Street's mistakes," Obama said. "There will be no more taxpayer-funded bailouts - period."

The Washington Post "Congress passes financial reform bill": Congress gave final approval Thursday to the most ambitious overhaul of financial regulation in generations, ending more than a year of wrangling over the shape of the new rules. Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.), who shepherded the bill through the Senate, said the legislation will help restore Americans' confidence in the badly battered financial system. "More than anything else, my goal was, from the very beginning, to create a structure and an architecture reflective of the 21st century in which we live, but also one that would rebuild that trust and confidence."

The Boston Globe "Financial rules overhaul OK'd": The US Senate yesterday passed a sweeping overhaul of financial regulations, getting crucial support from three New England Republicans in a vote that hands President Obama a major legislative victory as his party heads into midterm elections.  “I’m about to sign Wall Street reform into law, to protect consumers and lay the foundation for a stronger and safer financial system, one that is innovative, creative, competitive and far less prone to panic and collapse,’’ Obama, who is planning to sign the bill in a ceremony next week, said yesterday. “Unless your business model depends on cutting corners or bilking your customers, you have nothing to fear.’’

The Wall Street Journal "Law Remakes U.S. Financial Landscape": Congress approved a rewrite of rules touching every corner of finance, from ATM cards to Wall Street traders, in the biggest expansion of government power over banking and markets since the Depression. The legislation creates a council of regulators to monitor economic risks; establishes a new agency to police consumer financial products; and sets new standards for the way derivatives are traded. "These reforms will benefit the prudent and constrain the imprudent," Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said in a press conference. "Strong banks, the well-managed financial innovators, will adapt and thrive under the new rules of the road."

The Caucus "The Early Word: Finish Line for Financial Bill": According to The Times’s Binyamin Appelbaum and David Herszenhorn, the overhaul certainly was a sign of Washington’s newfound skepticism of financial markets. It is also, they write, “catalog of repairs and additions to the rusted infrastructure of a regulatory system that has failed to keep up with the expanding scope and complexity of modern finance." The bill also caps a legislative trifecta for President Obama and Democrats on Capitol Hill, coming after the stimulus plan and health care overhaul.

The Dallas Morning News "Financial overhaul bill passes": Congress on Thursday passed the stiffest restrictions on banks and Wall Street since the Great Depression, clamping down on lending practices and expanding consumer protections to prevent a repeat of the 2008 meltdown that knocked the economy to its knees. The Senate's 60-39 vote was a significant legislative victory for President Barack Obama, who had pledged to rein in the Wall Street actions behind the crisis and to step up government regulation that failed to prevent it. In its final form, the package hews closely to the plan unwrapped a year ago by the White House and in some ways is even tougher. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs promptly cast the vote in political terms. "This will be a vote that Democrats will talk about through November as a way of highlighting the choice that people will get to make in 2010," he said.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Cynthia Tucker “Obama adds Wall Street reform to his record of accomplishments":  Here in Washington, where Beltway insiders are completely absorbed with winning and losing, pundits and some Democratic politicians are stunned — stunned! — that President Barack Obama ran for the presidency because he actually meant to get some things done. In just a year and half, he’s accomplished an ambitious agenda that many presidents would envy. Just yesterday, Obama and Congressional Democrats (joined by a bare handful of Republicans) completed the most significant overhaul of Wall Street since the Great Depression.