Dick Durbin: “If I could further ask the Senator from Florida, this bankruptcy reform is going to affect millions of Americans. About…”

“If I could further ask the Senator from Florida, this bankruptcy reform is going to affect millions of Americans. About 1 million to 1 rac{1}{2} million a year file for bankruptcy, and all of their members of their family, of course, are affected by the bankruptcy so these people filing for bankruptcy have reached a point where their bills are so large they have said: I cannot do it, it is far in excess of what I can ever pay off, and they go into bankruptcy court asking that they have their debts relieved. They give up most of their assets in life and their debts are then paid off partially, as much as they can, and they walk out of the bankruptcy court with a new day ahead of them. That has been the law for a long time. This bill we are considering says, wait a minute, we may not let you walk out of the court with all of your debts behind you. You may walk out of the court with some of the debts still on your shoulders that you have to keep paying. So if I understand the Senator's amendment, he is saying if the debts we are talking about were incurred not by the person filing bankruptcy but in their name because of identity theft, then for goodness sakes it should not be said at the end of the bankruptcy process that they still have to carry these debts which some criminal has incurred in their name.”