Proposed Bankruptcy Act Is Devoid of Decency

Re “Credit Card Firms Won as Users Lost,” March 4:

Thank you for your illuminating article on the role of credit card firms in pushing to make it more difficult for individuals to declare bankruptcy.

Our country’s long-standing legal policy of protecting the individual’s “future human capital,” that is earnings, is being threatened. That any elected senator or the administration would side with the credit card companies against individuals who could literally become enslaved to firms that charge fees and interest that by the standards of another age and time would be consider usury seems to contradict our core values and beliefs.

That a Republican administration and Senate, which rode into power as the defenders of core American morals and values, would be acting on behalf of companies that are already able to profit on their bad debt, at levels that far exceed any standard of decency, is truly disgusting. Where is the decency? Where is the compassion? Where is the protection of the common man? And yes, where is the supposed Christianity -- which the Republicans have wrapped themselves in to win elections?

Stephen G. Schneider

Hancock Park

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I have rarely seen a piece of federal legislation so single-mindedly malicious as the proposed Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act, set to be passed by Congress in the coming months. I once regarded as simplistic and uncharitable the popular image of politicians as puppets of major banks and financiers. No longer. The 109th Congress has apparently decided that for middle- and working-class families, sudden financial catastrophe must now be accompanied by a lifetime of servitude to creditors, no matter how predatory or usurious.

Who guessed that when the president promised his citizens an “ownership society,” he meant that a collection of banks would be able to own their very livelihoods? The “public servants” who pass this legislation make a mockery of the term.

Chris Green

Culver City