With health care legislation now signed into law, President Obama's attention has turned to the next issue on his domestic agenda: financial regulatory reform. While in recent weeks the economy has been showing positive signs towards recovery, overall there's still some skepticism about the latest upswing, as this week, the government filed fraud charges against Goldman Sachs.

In the aftermath of the Wall Street crisis and the TARP bailout, policymakers have been seeking to enact reforms to the regulatory system, with some concentrating on measures that would help ensure the American taxpayer won't be stuck footing future bills for poor financial institution decision-making. To that end, Senate Democrats will begin debate this week on their version of the financial reform bill the House recently passed.

President Obama and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner have been meeting with the Senate Republican leadership and the media to argue the merits of the legislation and emphasize the need for the Senate to pass this financial reform package.

"What we can guarantee is if Congress joins with the President in passing the reforms we've proposed, reforms that passed the House, now working their way through the Senate, then taxpayers will not be on the hook for bailing out these large institutions from their mistakes in the future," Geithner said on NBC's Meet the Press.

The central theme that both Democrats and Republicans can agree on is that never again should the American taxpayer be forced to bailout a financial institution.

"I think, again, the best thing we can do for the country is to make sure we put in place strong protections, rules of the game, reforms with teeth. You want a system that acts preemptively to prevent these things from happening," Geithner said. "You don't want a system where you have the government clean up the mess later. The best way to protect Americans from these things happening is to put a stronger system in place where people were able to -- act ahead of the storm, ahead of the abuse, ahead of the crisis."

Republicans continue to be skeptical of the legislation, claiming the latest bill simply disguises what look to be future taxpayer bailouts for Wall Street. Specifically, the legislation being reviewed provides for a $50 billion industry-financed fund to be used for failing firms.

"Regardless of how the money is produced, it is a bailout fund that sort of guarantees in perpetuity that we will be intervening once again to bail out these big firms," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said on CNN's State of the Union.

"We want to make sure that we don't set up a system whereby we empower the government to continue to do what it has been doing -- running banks, insurance companies, car companies . . . The American people are saying, we don't want another bailout, but they also don't want a kind of perpetual government massive interventions across the board running private businesses."

Further discussion on the bill is scheduled for this week, with members from both sides of the aisle looking to make their case on the floor and in the media.