In a victory for President Barack Obama, the US Senate voted Thursday to end debate on the most sweeping overhaul of financial industry rules since the Great Depression of the 1930s. By a 60-40 margin, lawmakers set the stage for final passage of the legislation, Obama's top domestic priority, and Democrats said they hoped that vote could come later in the day. 'The best of all worlds: We would finish this thing and move on to other issues. We are going to try to do that,' said Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who acknowledged it would be 'real hard to get.' Republican senators Scott Brown, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe sided with all but two Democratic senators -- Maria Cantwell and Russell Feingold -- to reach exactly the 60 votes needed to wrap up the month-old debate. And Democratic Senator Arlen Specter, absent when a similar effort failed Wednesday, was on hand to cast a must-have vote to more forward with the bill. The measure aims to rein in big firms' use of high-risk practices blamed for the global economic meltdown of 2008, end taxpayer-funded bailout of financial titans previously deemed 'too big to fail,' and create an unprecedented consumer protection agency to shield Americans from industry abuses. It also aims to curb big banks lucrative, largely unregulated business in complex securities called derivatives, essentially bets on the future cost of an asset, which many businesses use to control risk from volatile prices. And it includes several measures aimed at increasing the transparency at the US Federal Reserve and the central bank's accountability. Passage of the bill would trigger a 'conference' between delegates from the Senate and House of Representatives to reconcile their rival versions of the legislation into one compromise measure. That bill would need to be approved by both chambers before going to Obama to sign into law. 