Robert Torricelli: “For more than 4 years, this body has considered the need for comprehensive bankruptcy reform. I have been very proud in…”

“For more than 4 years, this body has considered the need for comprehensive bankruptcy reform. I have been very proud in each of those years to work with Senator Hatch and Senator Grassley in accommodating the needs of individual Senators in fashioning what I think is a fair and balanced approach. I am certainly grateful to each of them, as well as Senator Biden, Senator Sessions, and Senator Leahy, for what I think has been an extraordinary and a very balanced approach on incredibly complicated legislation that has accommodated so many individual Senators. We are now approaching the end of this very long and detailed debate. I think it is worth noting, as we approach a final vote, that the legislation before the Senate has not only been considered for many years but has received extraordinarily broad and deep support in the Congress. Indeed, very similar legislation passed the House of Representatives 2 weeks ago on a bipartisan basis with more than 300 votes. That legislation provided an important change to what is, by any reasonable assessment, a very flawed bankruptcy system. Indeed, the best evidence of the need for this reform is that in 1998 alone, in the midst of one of the greatest economic expansions in American history, nearly 1.5 million Americans sought bankruptcy protection. This is a staggering 350-percent increase since 1980.”