After the Treasury Department has spent more than $200 billion in tax-payer money over the last year and a half to prop up hundreds of banks including financial giants Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, and Morgan Stanley, financial reform looks to finally make its way to the Washington’s agenda.

This past month, the Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, Chris Dodd (D-Connecticut) unveiled a plan to reform America’s current financial system. Among the key changes: 1) the bill explicitly charges the Fed with the responsibility to regulate bank-holding companies with over $50 billion in assets as well as even some large insurance companies; 2) it creates a new consumer protection agency housed under the Fed; 3) it forms a “systematic risk council” to monitor systemic economic problems; 4) the largest financial institutions will be forced to pay into a $50 billion fund that could be used in the future to dissolve firms that posed systemic risks to the economy; 5) a new Office of Credit Ratings housed under the SEC will have the power to regulate credit rating agencies; and 6) regulators will have new authority to prevent financial institutions with money deposits as well as bank-holding companies from engaging in proprietary trading.

The bill’s final form probably won’t look like what it is now as critics from the left and the right are bound to hack away at Dodd’s bill. But, let me take a swing at it first. Starting with the consumer protection agency; the problem with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau— as it will be called— is that, although the president will have the power to appoint an independent director, the new agency’s budget will be financed by the Fed. It’s common knowledge that he who holds the purse-strings in any situation holds true power. And the way the Dodd bill stands currently, it looks like the bureau’s “independent” director will be beholden to the Fed chairman—or, at least, taking his lead from him.

Furthermore, as a recent Time article suggests, regulators will be more inclined to bailout ailing financial institutions rather than leave them to market forces because the bill fails to set out hard conditions that would mandate action by regulators. In other words, regulatory discretion may not be the best way to go. When faced with the decision to allow for Great Depression 2.0 and be responsible for the unemployment of millions of Americans or face the wrath of populism, regulators would probably side with the former. Bottom line: the bill puts discretionary power in the hands of the regulators when it should also give them a baseline set of rules that they would be required to enforce.

If this bill is to truly reform the system for the better, these problems will need to be addressed at the least. Democrats and Republicans will do the same old dance bickering with each other, but if improvements aren’t made to the Dodd bill, then only the American people will suffer.