No Support for the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act

I would at this time like to express my disapproval of the new bankruptcy reform law moving through this year's Congress. President Bush and the members of Congress supporting this bill are wrong, so I wrote to my senators and congressman to let them know why. This is my letter to congressman Mark Kennedy:

Dear Congressman Kennedy,
I am writing to request that you not support the bankruptcy reform legislation that is being considered in the Congress at this time. In my opinion the bill does not merit support for the following reasons:

1. Credit card companies already have sufficient tools to manage their risks in extending credit to sub-prime borrowers. They build the risk of lending to these people into the interest rates that they charge this customers. They also have the ability to decide on a case by case basis whether potential borrowers are creditworthy. and certainly are not required to extend credit to anyone they deem too risky. Passing this bill allows creditors to ignore their fiduciary duty to be responsible lenders by dumping risk on the consumer and on the courts.

2. This will place an even heavier burden on people who are in financial distress through no fault of their own due to medical bills, job loss and other events beyond their control, while providing assistance to companies that already have no trouble with profitability and who already use high fees and penalties to generate profit from people who are already in great financial distress.

3. As a citizen who votes mostly Republican it is my judgement that this bill does not produce much benefit for the nation as a whole, and provides aid to creditors that do not need it. The amount of bankruptcy abuse in my opinion does not justify the provisions of this bill.

Thank you for reading,

Douglas Vaselaar

If bankruptcy blogging is good enough for the Instapundit, it's good enough for me.