The bankruptcy bill got
Krugman coverage today. Maybe this means the public debate will get more serious, though it's pretty late.
I was aware (see prev diary entry) that most bankruptcies aren't of the abusive sort the lending industry has scapegoated, but the failure of this amendment to close the loophole at the other end of the spectrum is pretty scandalous:
To the extent that there is significant abuse of the system, it's concentrated among the wealthy - including corporate executives found guilty of misleading investors - who can exploit loopholes in the law to protect their wealth, no matter how ill-gotten.
One increasingly popular loophole is the creation of an "asset protection trust," which is worth doing only for the wealthy. Senator Charles Schumer introduced an amendment that would have limited the exemption on such trusts, but apparently it's O.K. to game the system if you're rich: 54 Republicans and 2 Democrats voted against the Schumer amendment.
Some political points below the fold.
Here are a couple strategic and tactical issues I'm wondering about, and which don't seem to be getting any organized highlighting (yet):
- Where are Reid and our whips on this issue? They seem to be doing a great job lining everyone up on SocSec, but things seem insufficiently organized on the bankruptcy bill.
- Which Senators are getting behind the bankruptcy bill? And I want to know especially which Senators are still behind it despite the failure of the (Kennedy, Feingold, Durbin) amendments that were meant to curb some of the more draconian aspects of the bill. Biden is taking a lot of whipping on the blogs for their support, but he can't be the only offender, or we'd have filibuster strength. Who else is breaking the filibuster?
- This is the second time in the past few weeks that our noise machine appears to have been slow on the draw. (The first was the class action "reform" bill.) We seem not to be quite good enough yet at fighting on more than one front at a time. Here, SocSec seems to have distracted us enough so that these other bills have slid through without much of a fight. Obviously the blogs have been on top of the bankruptcy issue for a while, but somehow it didn't "filter up" the way the SocSec fight did. As a post-moterm, are the strategic issues worth examining more carefully? Is there anything we can do about the fact that mainstream coverage let this happen?