This is a boring discussion which most of you would be well advised not to waste your time reading.
If you have chosen a candidate to support in the primary and are not amenable to reconsideration, you need not read any further.
If you have not chosen a candidate, but you are not considering Biden as a potential option, you need not read any further.
If you remain undecided or at least persuadable, and you would potentially consider Biden as a candidate who you might support, I am writing this message to you because there has been some incorrect information about Biden, his relationship with the credit card industry, and the bankruptcy bills vetoed in 2000 and passed in 2005.
THE BANKRUPTCY BILLS PASSED IN 2005 AND VETOED IN 2000Like nearly all legislation supported by the Bush administration, there is keen irony in the title of the
Bankruptcy "Abuse" Prevention and Consumer "Protection" Act of 2005.
Make no mistake, the Act was passed to address a completely phony "crisis" of "bankruptcy abuse" (the only "bankruptcy crisis" was the crisis of increasing bankruptcies sought by good tax-paying citizens whose financial collapse was precipitated by exploding health care costs and by single parents who ex-spouses had reneged on their child support obligations). Likewise, this Act did nothing to "protect" consumers; it was a pure giveaway to the Credit Card industry at the expense of the most vulnerable American consumers (
disproportionately affecting racial minorities at five times the rate of other Americans).
All the Republicans in the Senate voted for this hideous law, and they were joined by 18 Democrats (Baucus, Bayh,
Biden, Bingaman, Byrd, Carper, Conrad, Inouye, Johnson, Kohl, Landrieu, Lincoln, Nelson, Nelson, Pryor, Reid, Salazar, and Stabenow).
But that's not the worst of it. There were
numerous amendments to the law proposed by Democrats to make the bill less anti-consumer, and Biden voted against most of them.
Biden rejected Kennedy's amendment to preserve the old bankruptcy protections for people who had been bankrupted by medical expenses.
Biden rejected Akaka's amendment to require the Credit Card industry to fuller disclosure of the risks of bankruptcy from overextended credit.
Biden rejected Durbin's amendment to preserve the old bankruptcy protections for people serving in the military.
Biden rejected Fiengold's amendment to protect the homes of the elderly from foreclosure.
Biden sat through the debate on other equally significant amendments and then didn't vote either way on those unsuccessful amendments.
Some people inevitably attempt to defend all of these anti-consumer votes by trying to confuse the Bankruptcy "Abuse" Prevention and Consumer "Protection" Act of 2005 with the Bankruptcy Reform Act of 2000, which was a substantially different law that Bill Clinton vetoed. For example, the Senate version of the Bankruptcy Reform Act of 2000 had a
provision to protect the first $100,000 in home equity from foreclosure and, more importantly, it included poison pill making bankruptcy unavailable to those who incurred their debt by being fined for illegally protesting abortion clinics. The 2000 bill was only passed by a procedural trick that stripped these key provisions, and this was the
specific reason it received a pocket veto.
Given the many different amendments to the bankruptcy bill vetoed in 2000 and the bankruptcy law passed in 2005, you cannot claim that a vote for one is the same as a vote for the other.
BIG BUCKS FROM THE CREDIT CARD INDUSTRYThrough the 2006 campaign cycle, the two Democratic Senators (or
House Members, for that matter) who had received
the most financing from the Credit Card industry were
1. Tom Carper (
Biden's protege), who had received $315,422, and
2. Joe Biden, who had received $285,250.
Subsequently, Biden has raised well more than enough to surpass his protege Carper in terms of fund raising from the Credit Card industry.
For comparison during this time period through the 2006, Hillary had received
$109,030, not more than Biden as some have suggested. For further comparison, Obama raised $40,925 and Edwards raised $7,950 from the Credit Card industry during this time frame.
It is a similar story on money from lobbyists: Hillary Clinton has raised the most at $427,950, Chris Dodd next at $181,925, and Joe Biden third most of all Democratic candidates at $94,760, but as a percentage of
the total amount they have raised, the percentage is more than twice as high for Biden and Dodd as compared to Hillary. Whether Hillary has also surpassed Biden in total contributions from the Credit Card industry remains to be determined, but she will never catch him in terms of the high percentage of support that Biden receives from the Credit Card industry and if Hillary passes him in total funds that will only be because she's raised more than ten times as much as Biden, with that disparity growing daily.
I'm no fan of Hillary's, but it is simply inaccurate to down play Biden's support from the Credit Card industry while playing up her funding from that industry.
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