Sept. 16  -- Treasury Department officials are meeting with consumer allies to build support for a regulations overhaul for Wall Street as President Barack Obama ramps up a campaign to win legislation by year's end.

The Treasury roundtables have been largely unpublicized, by invitation only and billed by some Democratic lawmakers as consumer-protection forums. The audiences are drawn in part from the rolls of a consumer-advocacy coalition that is pushing the legislation. They are designed to channel public anger at Wall Street and sidestep the financial industry, which is fighting to block the measure.

After spending the summer on health care, Obama this week shifted to the financial-services measure. Speaking in New York on Sept. 14, a year after Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.'s collapse, the president said Wall Street firms must accept "common-sense" regulations "to update the rules and regulatory structure."

Deputy Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin, the department's No. 2 official, said the consumer roundtables were one component of the campaign to win support for Obama's plan.

"We've been reaching out in a pretty aggressive way to the full range of constituencies," Wolin, 48, said in an interview in Greensboro, North Carolina, where he headlined a consumer roundtable with Democratic Representative Brad Miller on Sept. 1.

Accountability

Wolin took questions from about 50 community and consumer leaders who met behind closed doors. Participants later said they called on Washington to hold accountable the financial- services companies that received $700 billion in taxpayer funds.

"It's important to make sure those banks make investments in the community," said Farad Ali, program director for the Minority Business Enterprise Center in Durham, North Carolina, after the meeting. "You can rebuild Wall Street, but it's Main Street where people live."

Miller, a Democratic member of the House Financial Services Committee, said he hoped the meeting would draw attention to financial regulations.

"I'd planned to spend my August working on this issue but it's been all health care all the time," Miller, 56, said in an interview. "Consumer groups, civil-rights groups, labor groups, they've been completely called off, too."

Meg Reilly, a Treasury spokeswoman, wouldn't comment on future events, saying congressional offices would announce them.

Consumer Agency

In June, Obama released his plan to impose regulations on banks, lenders, and other financial institutions. The proposal would create a Consumer Financial Protection Agency for consumers. It would move most of the $592 trillion over-the- counter derivatives market onto regulated exchanges and increase capital requirements. In addition, it would improve oversight of the systemic risks large financial institutions pose to the economy and give the government power to dismantle failed companies.

While Obama allowed Congress to take the lead in drafting health-care and climate-change legislation, Wolin's office translated the administration's 88-page financial-regulations proposal into more than 600 pages of legislation for lawmakers to use as a foundation.

The approach, which Wolin described as a "testament" to the administration's commitment to the issue, could hasten the bill's progress. The Treasury delivered the last piece of the bill, new rules on credit-default swaps and other derivatives, to Congress on Aug. 11.

Lack of Leadership

Consumer advocates said they are concerned that a lack of leadership in the White House has given Wall Street a chance to make a case against the bill.

Rob Nichols, chairman of the Financial Services Forum, a group of 17 financial-services chief executive officers, called the Treasury meetings a "balanced" effort. The Forum has concerns about the legislation's increased capital requirements and the proposed consumer protection agency. They are among the financial services trade groups lobbying to rewrite the bill.

The Washington-based U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the nation's largest business group, has pledged to spend $2 million to "vigorously oppose" legislation that adds new layers of regulation, said David Hirschmann, president and chief executive officer of the Chamber's Center for Capital Markets. Chamber spokesman Eric Wohlschlegel had no comment on the Treasury roundtables.

Wall Street's Strength

"People have been surprised at the strength of Wall Street given how discredited it is," said David Arkush, director of Public Citizen's Congress Watch, a Washington-based group.

Wolin and other Treasury officials have been meeting with industry groups since spring as part of the agency's outreach effort.

Representatives Steven Driehaus of Ohio and Dennis Moore of Kansas, Democrats on the House Financial Services Committee, have hosted roundtables.

Audiences for the Treasury roundtables are drawn largely from the membership of Americans for Financial Services Reform, a coalition of more than 12 dozen consumer, labor and civil rights groups that joined this year to push for oversight. The coalition includes the Service Employees International Union and the National Community Reinvestment Coalition.

"I have not seen Treasury doing anything like this before," said Representative Joseph Crowley, a six-term New York Democrat who hosted Wolin at the first roundtable in the Bronx on Aug. 27.

Miller said he has failed to woo small banks and "plain- vanilla" lenders that don't sell complex financial instruments.

"The national associations aren't going to compromise," Miller said, "but individual bankers around the country know they don't do this stuff and they don't have anything to worry about."