Excellent Dave Ramsey Video On Bankruptcy Bill for those fighting it

[papau]

http://politology.us/

Video of Dave Ramsey slamming the bankruptcy bill. Check it out. http://treyjackson.typepad.com/junction/2005/03/video_dave_rams.html

Here is the summary. The House bill number is H.R. 685. Go to that page and then click "Cosponsors" to view the 83 cosponsors -The bill has been referred to committee. According to Thomas, it has been referred to the House Judiciary Committee (some think the Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law) and the Committee on Financial Services.

Finally, a group of twenty Democrats have written a letter to Hastert asking for quick movement on the bill, saying, "It is our hope that the House of Representatives will consider this important piece of legislation in an expedited manner." In a way this is worse than being a cosponsor because one gets the sense they are worried about the political cost of due consideration. (Note the signatures that are not on the cosponsor list.) It's a cynical dismissal of their duties as our representatives. Check the bottom of this post for the letter and the list of representatives that signed.

If there is a cosponsor on this bill that has no business being a cosponsor, contact them immediately and tell them to withdraw. Note that many of these reps cosponsored en masse on 2/9 - they might not have been paying attention. Getting someone to unsponsor would be a major coup.

It is still not clear where the bill is and where it could be frozen. Go ahead and start contacting the representatives that are in the full Judiciary and Financial committees to apply pressure.

For liberals - contact the letter-signing Dems that are frightened of due consideration, and tell them to vote Nay.
Joe Biden has already written a defensive-sounding letter (bugmenot) to the Los Angeles Times defending his vote, so they are feeling heat. Just One Minute has an idea about a "killer amendment" for the bill. There is one large legal flaw in the bill no one seems to have noticed. The means testing provision separates people by state. Simply put, there's no equal protection under the law. A different standard is applied to citizens from different states. That appears unconstitutional from the start.

[katinmn]

1. Thanks for the up-to-date summary, papau

So they may have hung themselves on the means testing. Excellent!

Looking up the 83 co-sponsors now.

edit: add direct link to cosponsors page http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d109:HR00685:@@@P