Political Quotes

“This issue forces us to face a fundamental question about who we are as a country, how we progress as a society, where our values lie as a people, how do we treat our fellow Americans who have fallen on hard times, and what is our responsibility to cushion those falls when they occur. We do so not only out of compassion for others but also knowing that hard times might at any moment fall on ourselves. The proponents of this bill claim it is designed to curb the worst abuses of our bankruptcy system. I think that is a worthy goal shared by all those in this Chamber, and we can all agree that bankruptcy was never meant to serve as a 'get out of jail free' card for use when you foolishly gamble away all your savings and don't feel like taking responsibility for your actions. But to accomplish that, this bill would take us from a system where judges weed out the abusers from the honest to a system where all the honest are presumed to be abusers, where declaring chapter 7 bankruptcy is made prohibitively expensive for people who have already suffered financial devastation.”