Bad day to be a little guy....

Couple things happened today in Congress apparently....

The House passed the bankruptcy reform bill today and its on its way to the White House for W's signature. Essentially, it is now much harder to declare bankruptcy and get one's life back together. There is a new means test, which means that if a debtor has an income that is greater than the mean income of the state in which they live, they have to file chapter 13 and a bankruptcy court will assign them their repayment plan. If the debtor has an income that is below the mean income of their state, their debts are erased and they get to start over. This is a huge change.

In all the run-up to this bill, I didn't hear enough talk about the root causes of bankruptcy today. This is a perfect example of treating the symptoms instead of the disease. There was not enough talk about the surging costs of healthcare in this country, and how just about (if not more than) half the personal/family bankruptcies in America are due to medical crises. How about going after the predatory lending loan-sharks, I mean credit card companies? Seems to me that there is some merit to re-thinking this one...

In the other major legislative "progress" yesterday the House sent a bill to the Senate that would keep the provision to repeal the Estate Tax past 2010. This is a tax that is paid by only the wealthiest 1% of Americans... It is estimated that this will cost the US treasury $290 billion... Now, how much will Social Security be short? $3.7 Trillion... How much money will the US treasury lose if all the Bush 2001-03 tax-cuts are made permanent? $11.1 Trillion...

Republicans and mostly the far-right like to talk about returning taxpayers money to its rightful place, taxpayers pockets. That burns me up, they talk about this as if they are making it better for the average American. Kerry wasn't lying when he talked during the campaign about how the richest in our society received the overwhelming amount of those tax-cuts.

It boils down to this, buy off the rich folks 'cause they vote for the GOP, then starve the programs that the less fortunate depend on to retire with some semblance of dignity.

What a great ownership society... it's all about the few owning the rest.

A. Liberal