The Hill News

Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) waged a defense of the Wall Street reform bill enacted this year, framing it in part as the legacy of a 30-year Senate career.

Dodd defended the legislation and the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau it created in a valedictory speech at New York University's law school on Tuesday.

"And while I’m proud of all the consumer protection work I’ve done in my career, I’m especially proud to leave on this note," Dodd said, referencing in particular the new consumer protection agency.

"It has always been my goal â€" and, as I leave the Senate, it is now my hope â€" that future generations of Americans will be able to spend, borrow and invest with confidence," he added. "Our economy depends on it."

The CFPB was a key hang-up in the prolonged Senate debate earlier this year over the Wall Street reform bill. Many Republicans asserted that its powers were too far-reaching, ! and wanted it curtailed in (if not removed from) the legislation.

Democrats, led in part by Dodd, ultimately decided to push ahead with the bill without changes, managing to achieve a final product for President Obama to sign that ultimately included the bureau.

Obama appointed Harvard professor Elizabeth Warren, the former chairwoman of the oversight board for the 2008 Wall Street bailout program, to help establish the bureau. The president did so only after Dodd raised doubts about whether or not Warren could win Senate confirmation for the actual position atop the new bureau.

Dodd said he was "pleased" that Obama had tapped Warren to help set up the bureau.