"We're going to finish the bill," said Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who appeared after months of wrangling to have in hand the 60 votes needed to ensure passage of Obama's top domestic priority.
Reid said he was "hopeful and confident" lawmakers would vote early Thursday to end debate on the bill and then move quickly to final passage -- either the same day or by Saturday at the latest.
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That would send the biggest overhaul of Wall Street rules since the Great Depression of the 1930s to Obama for his signature, handing the struggling president a huge political victory months before November mid-term elections.
At the White House, Obama praised three Republican senators for reaching across party lines in the bitterly divided Senate to give Reid the "breakthrough" votes needed to overcome any parliamentary delaying tactics.
Republicans Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine and Scott Brown of Massachusetts have lined up behind the bill, and holdout Democratic Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska joined them on Tuesday.
Democrats and their two independent allies control 58 seats in the Senate, and Democratic Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin opposes the measure, leaving Reid to hunt for three Republicans to reach the all-important 60 votes.
Obama said he was "grateful" to Snowe, Collins and Brown and underlined that "what members of both parties realize is that we can't allow a financial crisis like this one that we just went through to happen again.
"This reform will prevent that from happening," Obama said as he unveiled the nomination of Jacob Lew to serve as his budget director.
"I urge the Senate to act quickly so that I can sign it into law next week."
The measure aims to rein in risky investment practices blamed for the 2007-2009 global financial meltdown and give regulators an arsenal of new weapons to target shady behavior on Wall Street.
It creates a new consumer financial protection agency, an early-warning system to predict and prevent the next crisis, and mechanisms aimed at liquidating rather than saving companies once deemed "too big to fail."
The legislation also closes loopholes in regulations and requires greater transparency and accountability for hedge funds, mortgage brokers and payday lenders, and arcane financial instruments called derivatives.
The legislation also closes loopholes in regulations and requires greater transparency and accountability for hedge funds, mortgage brokers and payday lenders, and arcane financial instruments called derivatives.
It also includes a somewhat diluted version of the so-called "Volcker Rule" -- named for former Fed chairman Paul Volcker -- curbing commercial banks' ability to make speculative investments that are not on behalf of clients.
The US House of Representatives approved the legislation on June 30 in a largely party-line 237-192 vote.
Senate Republicans are expected to mostly oppose the measure, charging it goes too far in giving too much more power to regulators who failed to stop the previous crisis and does too little to rein in activities by government-backed mortgage giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.
Amid stubbornly high unemployment near ten percent and deep US public anger at Wall Street four months before the November elections, Obama has led Democrats in painting Republicans as opposed to common-sense reforms.
