The compromise bill now goes to the House and Senate for approval. For all the messiness of the process, financial reform and March’s health care reform win cumulatively make clear Obama and Democrats are governing in consequential ways – and once again Friday, without a single Republican vote. The results make clear the argument over Obama is no longer whether he’s effective or not, but whether voters will like the results.

The agreement came at 5:39 a.m., after 20 straight hours of work in the committee, a marathon session that tested the negotiating skills, patience and endurance of several dozen lawmakers tasked with reconciling two competing approaches to reining in Wall Street.

But it left no doubt about the mark Obama has left on his twin Democratic majorities in Congress – reluctant, even recalcitrant at times, but in the end, doing his bidding to remake two of the most important sectors of the U.S. economy.

“Over the last 17 months, we passed an economic Recovery Act, health insurance reform, education reform, and we are now on the brink of passing Wall Street reform,” the president said Friday morning, hours after the vote and just before departing for the G20 summit in Toronto. “And at the G20 summit this weekend, I’ll work with other nations not only to coordinate our financial reform efforts, but to promote global economic growth while ensuring that each nation can pursue a path that is sustainable for its own public finances.”

Asked if he could get the bill through the Senate, Obama answered, “You bet.”

His hoped-for third act – a wide-ranging climate change and energy bill – is next on Obama’s docket, and absent these successes, it would be easy to believe there was simply no way he could bend Congress to his will yet again, with midterms looming, poll numbers sagging and the nation’s financial coffers tapped out.

But Obama plans to press his advantage – to try to salvage one more legislative win out of the depths of the BP oil spill tragedy. He’s invited what amounts to the bipartisan Senate climate caucus to the White House Tuesday to plot out a way ahead.

The details of what Obama wants in a climate bill remain sketchy, just as they were for health care. Obama got more involved in the details of the financial reform push, dispatching Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and others to the Hill through the day Thursday to squeeze out the last needed compromise on derivatives.

And once again, the last person standing between Obama and a win was Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), a longtime health care holdout who stood her ground stubbornly – too stubbornly, some were grumbling Thursday – for the derivatives bill she wrote.

The final piece of the deal early Friday fell into place when Lincoln agreed to limit the reach of new derivatives rules to only the riskiest investments, a move to mollify New York lawmakers and moderate Democrats who feared the original plan would cripple Wall Street.

In addition, negotiators agreed to impose the so-called “Volcker rule” that blocks banks from making trades with their own cash – though with a compromise that softened the blow by allowing banks to make modest investments in hedge funds and private equity firms.

Republicans howled over another 11th-hour fix – the addition of a new tax on banks and big hedge funds to raise $19 billion to pay for the bill, which the GOP criticized as a dead-of-night levy that proved the bill was a costly government overreach.

The House plans to vote on the bill Tuesday, and the Senate next week as well. “This makes a huge difference. No one really thought we could get this done,” said Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.). But Dodd also said he didn’t know for sure that he had preserved his 60-vote majority in the Senate, in the face of all the changes.

Despite the last-minute efforts to soften the bill, the Wall Street reform act was shaping up as a tougher-than-expected response to the 2008 financial crisis.

The legislation would create a powerful new consumer financial protection bureau, limit the amount of fees debit-card companies can charge merchants, give the government the power to break up failing financial firms and force transparency of the $600 trillion derivatives market.

It is designed to prevent banks and other firms from carrying out inordinately risky activity that puts the entire financial system at risk – and gives the federal government new tools to step in if they do anyway, in the hopes of being able to prevent a future crisis.

On Thursday, the process was scattered and chaotic for much of the day, as administration officials and key lawmakers struggled to strike a deal on derivatives. The committee barreled through one issue after another, approving major changes to the financial system that left lawmakers wondering at times about what they were doing.

At one point, in comments caught on a hot microphone, Rep. Paul Kanjorski (D-Pa.) snapped at House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) that he was being rushed to approve a Senate proposal without being able to amend it.

“We’ve only had their offer for 20 minutes,” Kanjorski fumed before an annoyed Frank gave him several minutes to press an amendment.

The new bank tax also spurred sharp exchanges from tired and testy lawmakers overnight. “Why is it that Congress always sees the need to raise taxes on the American people in the dead of night at 3 o’clock in the morning?” asked Rep. Scott Garrett (R-N.J.).

Dodd shot back that the amount of the tax could effectively be paid for if Wall Streeters were willing to forego their bonuses. Those executive’s firms “are alive because the American taxpayer wrote a check,” Dodd thundered, referring to the $700 billion bank bailout plan. “To ask them to forego their bonuses . . . ought not to be a lot to ask.”

The day started on a discordant note, as Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) warned the committee that a handful of senators were “hijacking” the process. Corker directed his statement at Dodd, but he was referring to the Connecticut Democrat’s intense negotiations with Lincoln and a handful of moderate Republicans.

“A few senators, over very parochial single-issue items, almost are hijacking the process, and I just want to say to my friend there are a number of ways to get to 60 votes,” Corker said to Dodd.

His warnings were predictive -- because for hours on end, Democrats struggled to close a handful of deals.

The talks sputtered along for much of day while members of the New York delegation and the moderate New Democrat Coalition agitated for a face-to-face meeting with Lincoln, who as Senate Agriculture Committee, wrote the derivatives passage. But she rebuffed the requests, saying her schedule was too packed with conference committee business.

“It is difficult to find time,” Lincoln said early in the day. “We’re supposed to finish today, and have you seen the list of things that we still have to do?”

At that point, Rep. Mike McMahon (D-N.Y.), who has been leading the House opposition, began telling reporters that her refusal to meet and negotiate was threatening the bill’s chances in the House.

“It could scuttle the whole effort to reform the financial markets; that is my concern,” McMahon told POLITICO, adding that he has yet to meet with Lincoln on the issue. “I’m a little surprised we haven’t gotten to that point. It is going to have to happen, or it will be impossible to vote for this bill.”

Members of the New York delegation and the New Democrat Coalition — groups that first opposed the Senate derivatives position in letters to top negotiators last week — finally had a brief moment with Lincoln around 6 p.m. in the hallways outside the committee room, a last resort after more than 24 hours of entreaties had fallen short.

White House and Treasury officials shuttled between the Capitol and the Dirksen Senate Office buildings, going from a large meeting with House leadership and concerned rank-and-file to a private huddle in Lincoln’s personal office. Multiple top-level staff members and Treasury officials emphasized that no one would be leaving the Capitol complex until a deal was done.

Eventually, a few members of the New York delegation and the New Democrats joined direct talks with Lincoln.

“We’re not there yet, this is always the way that things move along. But I think both sides, though both have differences, are trying to get to a place where they can agree,” Hoyer told POLITICO as he exited the Speaker’s office around 7:30 p.m. “I don’t want to get into any of the specifics, but Chairman Frank or the New Dems or the Senate or Sen. Lincoln or [Rep.] Collin Peterson — all of them obviously are working together in extended meetings, as you know, trying to get to a breakthrough.”

Sources close to the House talks pointed to Peterson, the House Agricultural Committee Chairman, as the key negotiator in trying to sway Lincoln to back down from her position. A Democratic aide added that Peterson “just wants closure” and as the night wore on, the situation in the various negotiating rooms became Lincoln versus everyone else. Lincoln was in conversation with Peterson all night, both in the committee room and in her office a few floors above.

Lincoln cycled in and out of the committee room, talking with staffers, Treasury officials and fellow conferees. Her style of negotiations varied greatly from conferees such as Frank, who primarily stayed in the room but was constantly checking his BlackBerry, which seemed to be going off every five minutes.

House leaders tried to jump-start movement toward a deal by publicly offering a compromise, in hopes of bridging the differences.

But around 1 a.m., Lincoln took to the microphone to defend her approach, saying it was needed to bring the complex derivatives trades into the light of day and ensure that firms couldn’t be laid low by overreliance on the complex investments that contributed to the 2008 global meltdown.

“It’ll make banks get back to being banks and those of us who grew up in small towns in America understand what that means,” Lincoln said.

Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H) pushed back at Lincoln’s homespun explanation of her bill, saying, “You can use this phraseology, ‘Have banks do banking business,’ but what you’re going to end up with is banks giving a lot less credit. . .which fuels entrepreneurial activity, which creates jobs.”

It wasn’t until after this back-and-forth that Dodd announced the Senate would accept Peterson’s House offer with some modifications -- chief among them, that the riskiest trades known as credit-default swaps must go through a clearinghouse.

Moments later, during a break, Lincoln received a quick embrace from Frank.

“All day we’ve been talking to folks, throughout the process, listening to concerns. We feel this still accomplishes our goal and it’s something we can find agreement on in the caucus,” a Lincoln aide said. “But Chairman Lincoln’s position was that she was not going to do anything to gut the provision and [this compromise] preserves the intent.”

Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.), a conference committee member involved in the negotiations, said lawmakers still need to study the deal.

“There’s still going to be conversation. We’re going to get it out of conference committee and there’s still going to be talks when we hit the floor,” Meeks told POLITICO. “We were still all along developing language and going back and forth and trying to make something happen.”

In his compromise on the Volcker rule, Dodd set his sights on Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.), the linchpin of Democratic efforts to find 60 Senate votes. Brown has been pushing for exemptions from the Volcker rule that would benefit Massachusetts-based financial institutions, angering Democrats who dislike the outsize influence he has wielded in the negotiations.

Even with the compromise, the Volcker Rule still had the potential to upset the delicate balance of votes in the Senate, with Democrats Carl Levin of Michigan and Jeff Merkley of Oregon fighting for stronger language.

“He’s already got plenty of exemptions,” said Levin, the leading proponent for a strong Volcker rule with limited carve-outs, said of Brown. “There are a lot of things that were already written in there at his request.”

Levin would not say Thursday night whether he supports Dodd’s proposed language.

By 4 a.m., the lawmakers were anxious to wrap up, but they hit yet another snag: No more paper for the copiers.

“The reason for the delay is because they ran out of Xerox paper -- true story,” Frank explained. “Next time, Mr. Chairman, we’re going to Tweet you our responses.”