A DIFFERENT-- NON-BIDEN-- KIND OF BANKRUPTCY BILL

One of the most hated pieces of legislation to come out of the heinous Bush Regime was the 2005 Bankruptcy Bill, a law put together by the credit card industry and pushed primarily by corrupt members of Congress-- on both sides of the aisle-- who get gigantic payoffs from these same companies. The bill poisoned progressives against bought-off reactionary Democrats like Joe Biden (D-DE) and Al Wynn (D-MD).

With Democrats having won both houses of Congress, members are currently working on a completely different kind of bankruptcy bill, not one to protect Republican campaign contributors (and friends of Biden's and Wynn's) but to protect American working families who Republicans (and Biden and Wynn) spit on. Legislation was introduced into both houses today that would provide protection to workers who are usually the first to suffer for the corporate financial shenanigans that result in industrial bankruptcies (think Enron). The bill, which is already drawing criticism from the far right, would reduce compensation for top level management-- the ones, after all, who make the disastrous decisions that lead to bankruptcy-- in line with the cuts imposed on workers. The legislation would also prevent companies from dissolving collective bargaining agreements so easily. Sounds fair and reasonable, right? To Republicans it's the end of the world... communism.

"When Enron declared bankruptcy their workers and retirees were left high and dry," Senate Whip Richard Durbin, the bill's Senate sponsor, said. "Our bankruptcy laws made it easier to do this to the American worker. This bill puts the American worker in the front of the bus, not the back of the bus." The Chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, Ted Kennedy, who will be holding hearings on the bill, pointed out what I saw over and over again while I was in the corporate world. "It's the very insiders whose misconduct brings down a company who do well in a bankruptcy and walk away as millionaires." Democrats plan to change that equation so that working families are protected from predators and incompetents.

If anything, support in the House is even more powerful. And although you can expect a handful of the regular suspects-- reactionary Democrats like Chris Carney and Jim Marshall and Bud Cramer and their ilk-- to join with the GOP against American working families as they usually do, this bill is generating a great deal of enthusiasm. House Judiciary Committee Conyers is one of those who is most enthusiastic. "Under this legislation, a worker won't have to face the kind of threat to their benefits they are facing now and have been in recent years." Obviously this is a bill that will be vetoed by Bush and will have to await Hillary's ascension to the White House before it becomes law. She didn't vote in 2005 when the GOP/Biden bill passed but the other Democratic senators running for president, Obama and Dodd both opposed it. Needless to say every single Republican-- including fake moderates like Norm Coleman (R-MN), Gordon Smith (R-OR), Susan Collins (R-ME), and John Sununu (R-NH) supported it, as did the entire Republican pervert contingent: Larry Craig (R-ID), David Diapers Vitter (R-LA), Miss McConnell (R-KY), and Lindsey Graham (R-SC).