Senator Warner spoke on the Senate floor today to correct misleading characterizations over the past several days about proposed Wall Street reforms.

Senator Warner has worked with Tennessee Republican Bob Corker for several months to design a process to end taxpayer bailouts of companies deemed "too big to fail."  But yesterday, the Senate Minority Leader incorrectly claimed that the proposed legislation could lead to even more bailouts of failing financial institutions.  

On the floor today, Senator Warner said he found the Minority Leader's comments "curious," and outlined how the bipartisan Warner/Corker proposal would channel failing firms into bankruptcy instead of a bailout:

"This is too important to allow this piece of legislation to be drawn by the aisle that separates this body into Republican and Democratic camps.  We need to put a piece of legislation and solution in place that sets the financial framework and predictability for the next century, and I think we've gone a long way toward doing that."

You can watch highlights of his remarks below, or click here to read the entire statement:

Earlier in the day, Senator Warner spoke with the Washington Post's Ezra Klein:

"It appears that the Republican leader either doesn't understand or chooses not to understand the basic underlying premise of what this bill puts in place."

"Resolution," Warner continued, "will be so painful for any company. No rational management team would ever choose resolution. It means shareholders wiped out. Management wiped out. Your firm is going away. At least in bankruptcy, there was some chance that some of your equity would've been retained and you could come out in some form on the other side of the process. The resolution that Corker and I have tried to create means the death of the company. The institution is gone." ...

"If you haven't spent time with these issues," Warner sighed, "it's easy to pop off with sound-bite solutions that don't work."