Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, the Democratic substitute is an effort to make a number of improvements to the bill and to modify and take the sting out of some of the most onerous provisions on lower income debtors and struggling small businesses. We had hoped that some of these, if not even most of the amendments, would have been accepted by the bill's supporters during the markup in the Committee on the Judiciary, but they have been all with great regularity rejected, and every amendment that we were able to offer was technical. No matter what happened, we were not able to get our message through. While the provisions in the amendment are too numerous to describe here, a few details illustrate the fact that we have a clarification of the deductibility of health care costs from the means tests. We correct an oversight in the bill that would directly impact on children, which allows parents to list the costs of caring for their dependent children as a monthly expense, but the costs of caring for foster children are not included at all. Parents who voluntary become foster parents will have a harder time making ends meet during bankruptcy than biological parents. Obviously, we do not think this was intended by even the Members of the House Committee on the Judiciary, and we wanted to correct it.”