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WASHINGTON -- The House of Representatives, in a display of anti-Wall Street sentiment, passed sweeping legislation Friday that rewrites the rules governing financial markets, aiming to restrict the operations of big banks and the powers of the Federal Reserve.

The legislation, if enacted, would bring the biggest change to financial rules since the 1930s, changing business practices for everyone from mortgage brokers in California to traders on Wall Street. The vote advances a major White House initiative designed to tackle the perceived causes of last year's financial crisis.

The House's action isn't the final word. The Senate has yet to act, and an early version of its bill is different from the House version in many respects. But senators hope to have an agreement in principle by the end of December and to pass a bill in the first half of 2010.

Under the House version, large financial companies including Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. would be hit with billions of dollars in fees and would see new restrictions on their operations.

The bill would strip nearly all of the Federal Reserve's powers to write consumer-protection laws and would allow -- for the first time -- an arm of Congress to audit the Fed's monetary policy decisions, supposedly a politics-free zone. The Fed has fiercely resisted the idea.

For consumers and individual investors, the bill gives shareholders an advisory vote on executive compensation and creates a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency.

The new federal agency would write rules and examine banks for compliance with consumer protection policies on mortgages, credit cards and other products.

The bill, written in large part by House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, aims to fill gaps in the regulatory toolkit exposed by last year's crisis. It would give the government the power to break up even healthy financial companies if regulators believe they pose a threat to the financial system. It will also direct the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. to collect $150 billion in fees from big financial institutions to create a fund to pay for future large failures.

Business and banking groups lobbied hard to kill the bill, particularly the consumer agency, which critics charge would have the effect of restricting credit to consumers.

"Certain provisions in the legislation will undermine our shared goal of market stability and reducing systemic risk," said Timothy Ryan, president and chief executive of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, in a written statement. "We believe there can be additional improvements in the Senate," said a spokesman for Bank of America Corp.

"A new agency is just a whole new bureaucracy," J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive James Dimon said Tuesday at an industry conference.

The final vote was 223-202, with 27 Democrats joining unanimous Republican opposition.

Attention now shifts to the Senate, where lawmakers fought bitterly several weeks ago about what future financial rules should look like.

A big issue is what to do with the CFPA. Liberals view it as central to any regulation. House lawmakers have already agreed to exempt smaller banks from its examiners. Senate Republicans don't want the agency created in the first place.

One Senate deal under consideration would allow the new agency to be created, but wouldn't let it examine or enforce new rules against banks in most cases.

Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd has proposed creating a single federal bank regulator, stripping supervisory powers from the Fed and FDIC. His goal was to more closely focus each agency on their core responsibilities and eliminate the turf-fighting between different regulators.

Three days of debate on the House bill highlighted deep philosophical differences between Democrats and Republicans about the role of regulation in capitalism. Democrats argued that more government involvement was necessary to prevent a future financial collapse and to protect consumers.

We are sending a clear message to Wall Street," said Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.). "The party is over. Never again."

Republicans countered that the Democrats' plan would create huge government bureaucracies, stifling access to credit. "Their bill will continue the destruction of jobs in this country," said Rep. Scott Garrett (R., N.J.).

House lawmakers made multiple changes to an original White House proposal, often injecting a more populist bent to penalize large financial companies while also exempting smaller firms from certain bank examinations.

Democratic leadership narrowly defeated an amendment by Rep. Walt Minnick (D., Idaho) that would have quashed the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Agency. In one victory for banks, Republicans and more than 70 Democrats defeated an amendment that would have allowed bankruptcy judges to rework the terms of mortgages.