Political Quotes

“this bankruptcy reform bill before the Senate, S. 256, is a 500-page bill, which has been the dream of the credit card industry, banks, and financial institutions across America for almost 10 years. What they are trying to do in this bill is make it more difficult for someone to have their debts discharged in bankruptcy. Now, of course, everyone understands our legal and moral obligation to pay our debts. But we recognized a long time ago that some people get into a situation where they are swamped with debt and cannot get out from under it. In the old days, they were relegated to debtors' prisons; they literally imprisoned them. In more civilized times, the decision was made to have a civil court procedure, where you could go in and have your debts released, surrendering virtually all of your assets to start over. That is happening in America today. About 1.3 million Americans go into bankruptcy court for personal bankruptcies. The credit card industry and the banks say too many people are getting their debts discharged. So we are going to set up a new process in the bankruptcy court where we are going to ask more questions than ever and try to determine whether the person filing for bankruptcy could conceivably pay back, over the next 10 years, $165 a month. And if they can pay back $165 a month, we will not discharge their debts. They will end up walking out of court with the same debt they carried in, in most cases.…”