While he carried only eight counties, one of them was his home county of Multnomah County, which he won by 142,000 votes—a deficit that proved too much for Smith to overcome. Merkley thus became the first person to unseat an incumbent Oregon senator since Bob Packwood's defeat of Wayne Morse in 1968. Merkley formally resigned his seat in the Oregon House in a letter to Secretary of State Bill Bradbury on January 2, 2009. He was sworn as a Senator on January 6, 2009. Upon his swearing-in, Oregon was represented in the Senate by two Democrats (Merkley and Ron Wyden) for the first time since Maurine Brown Neuberger served alongside Morse from 1960 to 1967. Merkley has a progressive record as a senator. He became the first Democratic member of the Senate to announce that he would vote against the confirmation of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, citing Bernanke's failure to "recognize or remedy the factors that paved the road to this dark and difficult recession." As a member of the Senate Banking Committee, Merkley became a leading force in the effort to pass the Wall Street reform bill. Along with Michigan Senator Carl Levin, he successfully added an amendment, usually called the Volcker Rule, to the Dodd–Frank Wall Street reform bill, which banned high-risk trading inside commercial banking and lending institutions. Merkley also championed an amendment that banned liar loans, a predatory mortgage practice that played a role in the housing bubble and subsequent financial collapse. He was a founding signatory of a mid-February 2010 petition to use reconciliation to pass legislation providing for a government-run health insurance program. Merkley also championed legislation to give new mothers private space and flexible break times to pump breast milk once they return to work. Merkley's breastfeeding amendment was included in the health care reform law and signed into law by President Obama in 2010. In late February 2010 Merkley again made headlines when he unsuccessfully tried to persuade Republican colleague Jim Bunning of Kentucky to drop his objection to passing a 30-day extension of unemployment benefits for jobless Americans. Bunning replied, "Tough shit." A spokesman for Merkley said that Merkley did not hear Bunning's remark at the time. In late 2010 Merkley began circulating a proposal about the need to filibuster in order to block legislation. In 2011 he introduced a bill to reform the filibuster. He was joined by Senator Tom Udall of New Mexico and Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa.