It’s reasonably likely that Congressional Republicans will oppose efforts to fix the U.S. financial system with the same determination they have shown against health care reform.

House Minority Leader John Boehner last week told the American Bankers Association he expects legislation will be bottled up for a year or more. He urged bankers to lobby aggressively against strict legislation.

“Don’t let those little punk staffers take advantage of you,” he said March 17 at the American Bankers Association government relations summit.

This week the Senate Banking Committee approved a bill proposing new rules for banks and Wall Street, but lobbyists are campaigning against Democrats’ efforts to reform the financial system. As they made clear at the summit, bankers hope Republicans can delay legislation until public anger over misjudgments and malfeasance in the financial industry fades.

Unlike the health care debate, opponents are not making a high-profile case that the government should stay out of financial management. The meltdown of 2008 and 2009 showed that financial markets are not self-regulating; borrowers and investors were ruined as markets went out of control, and some of the nation’s biggest financial institutions had to be saved from bankruptcy.

Freedom from regulatory oversight enabled financial institutions to make loans to poor credit risks. The unregulated market for new financial instruments allowed them to walk away from these loans, repackaging them as allegedly safe investments. Goldman Sachs marketed such risky securities, and at the same time used credit swaps to bet against them.

A system that allowed such abuses must be reformed. The goals of the 1,336-page financial reform bill introduced by Sen. Chris Dodd include the creation of a consumer protection watchdog agency and a plan to prevent bailouts of firms deemed too big to fail.

The bill calls for an overhaul of the convoluted system now used to regulate banks and thrifts. It seeks to regulate hedge funds and the trading of derivatives. It proposes to give shareholders a say in executive pay.

We wish reform could be accomplished quickly, but patience will be essential to its success. Neither reformers nor the financial industry are entirely happy with Dodd’s bill, and its complexities demand careful analysis.

But establishing a plan to avoid another credit crisis should be a national priority.