Bankruptcy bill flying through

Credit-card issuers, backed by President George W. Bush and a larger Senate Republican majority, are poised to win limits on consumers' ability to erase their debts in bankruptcy.

By a vote of 74-25, the Senate passed legislation that will force some consumers to pay more of their credit card and other unsecured debts. Republicans in the House of Representatives say they may put the bill to a vote as soon as next month.

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Proponents argue that the bill is needed to curb the five- fold increase in personal bankruptcy filings from less than 300,000 in 1980 to almost 1.6 million in 2003.

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18 Democrats, including Minority Leader Harry Reid, joined 55 Republicans and the Senate's lone independent in voting for the bill.

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The Senate rejected more than 25 Democratic amendments to soften the bill's impact on bankrupt Americans.

One of the rejected amendments would have helped people keep their homes when they are driven into bankruptcy by medical expenses. Another would have required credit-card companies to tell each borrower in statements how much interest they would owe if they only paid the minimum monthly balance.
  Bloomberg article

Let's not fix the problem of non- and underinsured poor, or the credit hook that credit card issuers push on them on a daily basis with easy credit offers in their mailboxes and outrageously high interest rates.

"By reforming the system with this common-sense approach, more Americans -- especially lower-income Americans -- will have greater access to credit,'' President Bush said in a statement that urged the House "to act quickly on bankruptcy.''

Say what?!? They'll have greater access to credit by this? How's that? And, would that be a good thing?

For eight years, credit-card companies such as MBNA Corp., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and the finance units of General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co. have pushed for the bill. It passed three other times in the Senate by lopsided margins only to stall in the House.

....hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

And let them eat cake.