There´s something about puffers like Mitch McConnell gasbagging about government takeovers when in fact this reform is nothing but driven by the same conditions that almost destroyed an economy and a country. These Republican blowhards should be given a ticket out of Washington. Obama and the Dems made some useful progress on this most pressing of issues and we applaud them, loud and clear.

As was the case with last year’s economic stimulus and this year’s health care overhaul, Republican opposition to the bill was primarily an attempt to drag down Mr. Obama by killing any legislative accomplishment.

When that effort was headed for failure, Republican leaders disparaged the bill on ideological grounds. On Thursday, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, lashed out at what he called a “government-driven solution,” while the senior Republican on the banking committee, Richard Shelby of Alabama, bemoaned “vast new bureaucracies.”

Those are convenient and time-tested bugaboos to campaign by, but they ignore the urgent needs the bill addresses, and its achievements. Those include resolution procedures to help ensure that shareholders and creditors — not taxpayers — bear the losses when big financial institutions fail; new capital requirements for banks and other curbs to help quell speculative excess, including the regulation of derivatives and restrictions on proprietary trading.

To get all that, the bill had to withstand a lobbying juggernaut. Since January 2009, the financial sector has spent nearly $600 million to weaken reform, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The lobbyists notched some victories, to be sure, mainly in the defeat of reforms that would have broken up large banks and done more to constrain risk-taking throughout the financial system.

But they also lost, especially on consumer protection. The new consumer financial protection bureau established in the bill is a milestone, not only for its intent and power to rectify lending abuses, but because it will institutionalize the insight that the safety and soundness of banks cannot — and should not — be measured by profitability alone, but by the impact that bank practices ultimately may have on consumers.

Having earned this victory, the Obama White House and the bill’s Congressional supporters still have another fight ahead of them — over implementing the bill. The legislation requires regulators to write hundreds of rules and conduct dozens of studies, a process that occurs largely outside of public view.

Complicating public trust in the process is the fact that some of the regulatory bodies — the Federal Reserve comes most prominently to mind — are still run by the same people who were blind-eyed as the financial crisis developed. And because the implementation phase is labor- and resource-intensive, public-interest groups, including consumer and investor advocates, will be outmatched by the financial lobby. Congress will have to be unceasingly vigilant during the rule-making to ensure that resulting regulations reflect lawmakers’ intent and the public’s needs.

The administration also must supply top-level fire power, and use the president’s bully pulpit, to guarantee that the bill’s promise is fulfilled.

Supporters of this much-needed financial reform bill took a well-earned bow on Thursday. Now they have to get back to work.

              NY Times Editorial 7-1510