During an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union” today, Senator Warner said he was optimistic of a bipartisan agreement to better regulate bad behavior on Wall Street and other reforms to the financial regulatory system.

He called on his Republican colleagues to provide three or four specific suggestions on what they would like to see changed in the bill so both sides could reach bipartisan consensus and amend the legislation on the Senate floor.

“I’m still relatively new to this job, and I didn’t get the memo that we weren’t supposed to get stuff done in a bipartisan way. … This should not be a partisan bill. My hope is we can get a bill that will get 75 votes, because we need to set financial rules of the road for the next 50-60 years.”

He also cleared up misconceptions about the bill's so-called “resolution authority” provisions, which would prevent another taxpayer-funded bailout of large financial institutions. Senator Warner said that he, along with Tennessee Republican Senator Bob Corker, worked out a number of “trip-wires” that would prevent firms from becoming “too big to fail.”

As a worst-case scenario, their proposal would create a fund -- paid for by the financial institutions themselves, not the taxpayers -- that would allow some extra time to “keep the lights on” while the FDIC works to shut down the institution:

“If there is a crisis coming and you have to use what’s called ‘resolution,’ we set it up in a way that no rational management team would ever want it. It means the company is going out of business, it means it is being liquidated, it means the shareholders are going away, it means the management is disappearing. This truly is a death panel. … If there hadn’t been this fund, there could potentially be this gap in the financing where the taxpayer could be exposed.”

You can watch the entire interview below: