Jim Sensenbrenner: “Mr. Chairman, this bill has been percolated through the Congress for the last 4 years. It has probably been one of the…”

“Mr. Chairman, this bill has been percolated through the Congress for the last 4 years. It has probably been one of the most debated, amended and negotiated bills that have come before the Congress of the United States in the last 25 years. At the end of the last Congress, overwhelming majorities in both Houses approved this bill. It was a voice vote in the House, and the vote in the other body was 70-28. I think that shows that the vast majority of Members of both political parties are happy with the compromises that have been reached as a result of almost 4 years of painstaking and seemingly never ending negotiations. We hear an awful lot about the fact that bankruptcy reform is necessary. My friends on the other side of the aisle say, yes, we support bankruptcy reform but not this bill. That argument to me seems to be that the perfect is the enemy of the good. In any legislative body where compromise is the rule in order to pass legislation, the perfect is probably never attainable. This bill is a good bill. It is a bill that will make a dent on the $400 that every family in this country who pays their bills has to pay in increased taxes, increased costs for goods, increased costs for services as a result of about $44 billion a year being written off in debt and bankruptcy.”