GOP BANKRUPTCY SHAFT

Two from WorkingForChange. First, the Washington Post's near-liberal E. J. Dionne:

Bankrupt bankruptcy bill

Warren and her colleagues surveyed Americans in bankruptcy courts and found that half said illness or medical bills drove them to bankruptcy. The "bigger surprise," as Warren has said, is that three-quarters of the medically bankrupt had health insurance. Which is to say that even those who have insurance are often not well-enough covered to protect them from financial disaster.

Consider the double-whammy that this Congress could end up imposing. At a moment when the president is proposing cuts in Medicaid and when many Americans are losing part of all of their health insurance coverage, citizens who fall into medical-financial hell are being told it will be much harder for them to win relief from bankruptcy judges.

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Next, uber-Texan Molly Ivins:

Bad to worse

The New York Times reports "legal specialists say the proposed law leaves open an increasingly popular loophole that lets wealthy people protect substantial assets from creditors even after filing for bankruptcy."

What, our Republican Congress passing a bill that favors rich people at the expense of "honest Americans who play by the rules and have to foot the bill"? If you have a lot of money (most people filing for bankruptcy don't have this problem), you just put it in an asset protection trust and walk away. You don't even have to set up the trust offshore anymore -- five states have made it legal to set them up in their borders, and you don't even have to live in any of the five to do it.

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