Chuck Grassley: “I wish to respond to what the Senator from Massachusetts spoke about so passionately. I probably do not speak with the…”

“I wish to respond to what the Senator from Massachusetts spoke about so passionately. I probably do not speak with the same passion he does, but I do want to say that he has it completely wrong. You cannot ignore the fact that since 1980 bankruptcies have increased from around 330,000 in that year to just under 1.4 million in 1999. That is a fact that cannot be ignored. Consequently, it seems to me to be completely wrong for some other Senator to say we do not have a bankruptcy problem in the United States. Congress ought to deal with it, and changing the law will help. I do not pretend changing the law is going to entirely respond to that problem, but the extent to which it does, we should do it because this increase in bankruptcies is a huge increase. The small dip in the filings that Senator Kennedy has referred to will not erase this very basic, fundamental problem we have in our economy with the bankruptcy laws. We have a real bankruptcy crisis on our hands. We cannot ignore that.”