Seventeen Democratic senators voted for the Bankruptcy Abuse and Prevention Act of 2005. I’ll list them here to shame them:
1. Baucus (D-MT), 2. Bayh (D-IN), 3. Biden (D-DE), 4. Bingaman (D-NM), 5. Byrd (D-WV), 6. Carper (D-DE), 7. Conrad (D-ND), 8. Inouye (D-HI), 9. Johnson (D-SD), 10. Kohl (D-WI), 11. Landrieu (D-LA), 12. Lincoln (D-AR), 13. Nelson (D-FL), 14. Nelson (D-NE), 15. Pryor (D-AR), 16. Reid (D-NV), 17. Salazar (D-CO)
You can read Barack Obama’s floor speech opposing this travesty of a bill here. Let’s have a sample:
With this bill, it doesn’t matter if you ran up your debt on a trip to Vegas or a trip to the Emergency Room, you’re still treated the same under the law and you still face the possibility that you’ll never get the chance to start over.
Now, it would be one thing if most people were abusing the system and falling into bankruptcy because they were irresponsible with their finances. But we know that’s not the case. We know that most people fall into bankruptcy as a result of bad luck. And we know that a recent Harvard study showed that nearly half of all bankruptcies occur because of an illness that ends up sticking families with medical bills they just can’t keep up with.
How much truer is that statement today than it was in 2005 (when it was also true)? But seventeen Democrats enabled this legislation which is now devastating families all across the country. And it isn’t just that they voted for it that is damaging. It’s also damaging for this reason (and note that John McCain cannot count).
“Eighteen Democrats and John McCain worked together on the bipartisan Senate Bankruptcy Bill and Barack Obama’s rigid partisanship and self-promoting political attacks show that he’s a typical politician – which is the problem in Washington, not the solution.”
I’m assuming that John McCain reached the number eighteen by counting independent senator Jim Jeffords of Vermont as a Democrat. Regardless, these seventeen Democrats enabled McCain to claim that his vote for the bankruptcy bill wasn’t some mean-spirited attack on the unlucky but a bipartisan consensus vote to punish those that game the system. Obama’s message is thereby diluted.
Barack Obama on Tuesday proposed changing bankruptcy laws to “fast-track” the process for military families, help seniors keep their homes, and protect people recovering from natural disasters.
The Democratic presidential hopeful also accused Republican rival John McCain of repeatedly siding with the banking industry, saying, “When it comes to strengthening the safety net for hardworking families, he’s been part of the problem, not part of the solution.”
Like on so many issues during the Bush years, a minority of Democrats who cave in on issues of principle wind up diminishing the Democratic Party’s brand and enabling the Republicans to hide under the cover of bipartisanship. That is why it is now necessary to target bad Democrats for defeat wherever it is remotely possible.
that’s always been the problem with our ‘big tent’ concept. We have an identity crisis.
An aside:
The name that jumps out of the list for me is Kohl. He votes with the GOP with fair regularity and on crucial issues. What makes him different is that he’s from the state that easily reelects Feingold as its other senator. Obviously the Dems can do better than Kohl and win.
Most of the others on the list are from dumbass states that will probably never put a liberal in Congress. We should direct our efforts at the low-hanging fruit.
Kohl has a pretty liberal voting record overall. But he’s definitely a corporate Democrat. He’s also almost invisible. There’s an outside chance, however, that he’ll wind up as chairman of the Judiciary Committee next year.
It would take a couple of dominoes falling.
First, Robert Byrd (for health reasons) would be replaced by as the chairman of Appropriations. Then Inouye would get passed over for Appropriations and stay on as chair of Commerce. Instead, Leahy would get the gig on Appropriations.
The two people on Judiciary with more seniority than Kohl are Kennedy and Biden. Kennedy has brain cancer and Biden probably wants to keep his gig as chair of Foreign Relations. So, Kohl could wind up in charge of Obama or McCain’s supreme court choices.
salazar’s at the top of the shit list of every progressive l know, for a lot more than the bankruptcy vote. but the consensus is it’s going to be damned hard, if not impossible to oust him.
there aren’t any viable candidates that l can see, with the possible exception of denver mayor, john hickenlooper, and l’m not at all confident that he could be encouraged to run.
as an aside, udall will no doubt be an improvement over allard, if he wins…which given the lingering closeness of the polls against a hack R opponent is far from a sure thing…but he will be closer to salazar than to feingold. he’s relatively spineless imnsho.
my 2¢ from colorado.
I can’t see anyone out there that is going to challenge Salazar. The only thing that might improve Salazar’s behavior is a big win for Obama in his state that proves he doesn’t need to vote so cautiously.
sad but true.
a big win here is what it’s going to take to put udall over the top as well…it’s certainly doable.
as for hoping that salazar will improve if that happens, l’m not ready to concede that. he’s well aware of the negative feelings about a lot of his votes, but there hasn’t been any discernible change.
we shall see.
We are stuck with Salazar, a man who believes in nothing but self preservation. The hope of many was that Udall as senator would pull Salazar a tad to the left, since he often looked reasonable (note: I didn’t say progresssive) vis a vis Allard and could get by with very conservative positions. But Udall has already caved by voting for FISA, and we expect him to keep running from his original progressive constituency in Boulder.
On TV this weekend, some commentators were strongly pushing Baye for VP for Obama. I hope Obama is not going to do anything like that. These people are NOT our party and should not be anywhere near the White House.
I doubt he’ll do it, but if he does it will be to pull Indiana into his camp. Bayh is one of the few pols that can almost guarantee a victory in his state. Of course, Obama is polling even there now, so it’s so much Bayh being that big of a draw as it is Obama not needing that much of a push.
Nonetheless, Bayh would be situated to be our nominee in 2016, and that is not something I want to see. As a Vice-President he’d be fine. As a president, not so much.
overlooked about the bankruptcy bill is the damage inflicted upon risk taking small business entrepreneurs. Many small business people put much of their own life savings into starting their own business. The option of filing for bankruptcy allows them to start over and support their family in case the business fails. Hence, they’re able to take the risk. Now more than ever we need risk taking entrepreneurs. But instead we have a cabal of Brezhnev Republicans and feckless Democrats who allow airlines that default on their pension plans to file for bankruptcy while small business people and struggling wage earnings who suffered bad luck are screwed.
I bet John McCain wouldn’t mind filing for bankruptcy if his overdue Amex bill went out of control. But the hell with people who really need it.
McCain should pay his property taxes more than once every four years while he’s at it.
Booman, you nailed it about the complicit and enabling democrats. This bankruptcy bill was a sham from the beginning and these Corporate Ds were all paid off. I wonder how much higher the Dems who voted yes received from the banking and credit card industry compared to the Dems who voted against. I am sure it is substantial.
You touched on the key comeback that my good friend who works for a House GOPer on the hill has when we talk about the Iraq war. He always reminds me that half of the Dems supported the war from the beginning and there would not have been a war without them. He can not stand those democrats who demigod the war issue after they voted for it.
Painfully, his points are valid.
Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah,
Let’s elect McCain.
You have all the answers, why didn’t you run.
Obama did and he is a helluva lot smarter then you are with your little website.
Look how tough I am. I can start a blog. See how I stand up to the bad guys.
Let’s see your act get out their and win a vote. Sure is easy to have the answers when you are too scared to run.
Assholes like you gave us Bush, and you will give us President McCain. And then you can blame everyone else but yourself.