[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 165 (Friday, November 19, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Pages S15060-S15062]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 BANKRUPTCY REFORM ACT OF 1999--Resumed

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the pending business.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       A bill (S. 625) to amend title 11, United States Code, and 
     for other purposes.

  Pending:

       Hatch/Torricelli amendment No. 1729, to provide for 
     domestic support obligations.
       Wellstone amendment No. 2537, to disallow claims of certain 
     insured depository institutions.
       Wellstone amendment No. 2538, with respect to the 
     disallowance of certain claims and to prohibit certain 
     coercive debt collection practices.
       Feinstein amendment No. 1696, no limit the amount of credit 
     extended under an open end consumer credit plan to persons 
     under the age of 21.
       Feinstein amendment No. 2755, to discourage indiscriminate 
     extensions of credit and resulting consumer insolvency.
       Schumer/Durbin amendment No. 2759, with respect to national 
     standards and homeowner home maintenance costs.
       Schumer/Durbin amendment No. 2762, to modify the means test 
     relating to safe harbor provisions.
       Schumer amendment No. 2763, to ensure that debts incurred 
     as a result of clinic violence are nondischargeable.
       Schumer amendment No. 2765, to include certain dislocated 
     workers' expenses in the debtor's monthly expenses.
       Dodd amendment No. 2531, to protect certain education 
     savings.
       Dodd amendment No. 2753, to amend the Truth in Lending Act 
     to provide for enhanced information regarding credit card 
     balance payment terms and conditions, and to provide for 
     enhanced reporting of credit card solicitations to the Board 
     of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and to Congress.
       Hatch/Dodd/Gregg amendment No. 2536, to protect certain 
     education savings.
       Feingold amendment No. 2748, to provide for an exception to 
     a limitation on an automatic stay under section 362(b) of 
     title 11, United States Code, relating to evictions and 
     similar proceedings to provide for the payment of rent that 
     becomes due after the petition of a debtor is filed.
       Schumer/Santorum amendment No. 2761, to improve disclosure 
     of the annual percentage rate for purchases applicable to 
     credit card accounts.
       Feingold amendment No. 2779 (to Amendment No. 2748), to 
     modify certain provisions providing for an exception to a 
     limitation on an automatic stay under section 362(b) of title 
     11, United States Code, relating to evictions and similar 
     proceedings to provide for the payment of rent that becomes 
     due after the petition of a debtor is filed.

  Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, the Senate has been considering this 
bankruptcy bill as the main Senate business since November 4, 1999, 
after a failed cloture

[[Page S15061]]

vote in September. There have been dozen of votes conducted with 
respect to this issue, and yet there are still at least a dozen 
amendments pending to be offered, debated, and voted upon. It is with 
this in mind that I need to file this cloture motion on the bill in 
order to ensure we get a final vote, and that will be available when we 
come back after the first of the year.
  A lot of good work has been done on this bill on both sides, by the 
managers of the legislation and a number of Senators who have worked on 
it--Senator Grassley, Senator Hatch, Senator Sessions, on our side; 
Senator Torricelli, on the other side, has been involved; Senator Leahy 
has worked on this. So there is a lot of work that has been done and a 
lot of relevant amendments that have been voted on.
  I want to particularly note the good work of Senator Reid because he 
began with, I don't know, probably over 100 amendments.
  Mr. DASCHLE. Three hundred.
  Mr. LEAHY. Three hundred.
  Mr. LOTT. Three hundred amendments. I do not understand how the 
fertile minds of the Senate can be so productive to produce 300 
amendments on a bill such as this that has been already marked up in 
committee. Then we got it down to 36, and it continued to be narrowed.
  I hope when we come back after the first of the year something can be 
worked out where it will not be necessary to go forward with this. But 
I do believe there is a necessity to have this protection so that we 
will have this option of cloture so we can complete the bill, if there 
is no other way to do it when we come back after the first of the year.


                             Cloture Motion

  Mr. LOTT. So I send a cloture motion to the desk.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The cloture motion having been presented under 
rule XXII, the Chair directs the clerk to read the motion.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

                             Cloture Motion

       We the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the 
     provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate, 
     do hereby move to bring to a close debate on Calendar No. 
     109, S. 625, an act to amend title 11 of the United States 
     Code, and for other purposes:
         Trent Lott, Chuck Grassley, Paul Coverdell, Mike Crapo, 
           Craig Thomas, Larry E. Craig, Orrin Hatch, Don Nickles, 
           Conrad Burns, Rod Grams, Mitch McConnell, Pat Roberts, 
           Fred Thompson, Slade Gorton, Phil Gramm, and Mike 
           DeWine.

  Mr. LOTT. Under rule XXII, this cloture vote will occur on Tuesday, 
January 25, 2000. I ask unanimous consent that the vote occur at 12 
noon on Tuesday and the mandatory quorum under rule XXII be waived.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Mr. DASCHLE. Reserving the right to object, and I certainly will not 
object, let me say the majority leader and I talked about this. I am 
appreciative of his position. I am disappointed he has filed cloture. I 
hope it isn't received in the wrong way by all of those who worked so 
hard to get to this point.
  I had told my colleagues that if they continue to work and if they 
continue to cooperate, if they continue to allow time agreements, that 
we would not be in a position where we would have to file cloture and 
we would get to the final passage. That was my commitment. Senator Lott 
did not make that. I made it to my colleagues. In this case, I am going 
to have to explain to my colleagues why what I said is not what we are 
going to do.
  We are down now to a handful of amendments, with time agreements. So 
I am as convinced today as I was a couple of days ago, as I was before 
that, that cloture certainly isn't necessary. I am hopeful, with those 
tight time agreements, and with the opportunity to dispose of the 
amendments, we can come to final passage. But I will certainly work 
with the majority leader to see if we might find a way to make that 
happen.
  I hope he will work with us to assure those who have relevant 
amendments will have an opportunity to have their votes and we can 
finish.
  I do not object to the request.
  Mr. LEAHY. Reserving the right to object, and I will not object, just 
so we know the numbers, we had 320 amendments and are now down to 14. I 
compliment Senators on both sides of the aisle. Senator Reid deserves 
enormous credit. Senator Grassley, Senator Torricelli, Senator Hatch, 
and I worked very hard on that. We are working very hard again on both 
sides of the aisle. I think most Senators want a bankruptcy bill. We 
know there has to be a change.
  Mr. President, I am disappointed that the majority filed cloture on 
the Bankruptcy Reform Act.
  This week we made bipartisan progress on the Bankruptcy Reform Act by 
disposing of amendments. On Wednesday, we were able to clear 9 more 
amendments and accepted another one by a roll call vote for a total of 
10 amendments that were accepted to improve this bill.
  During our debate on the bill, the managers have accepted 37 
amendments to improve the Bankruptcy Reform Act, amendments offered by 
Democrats and Republicans.
  Senator Torricelli, Senator Reid and I worked in good faith with 
Senator Grassley and Senator Hatch to clear amendments and set roll 
call votes on amendments that we could not clear.
  From a total of 320 amendments that were filed by senators on both 
sides of the aisle on November 5th, Senator Torricelli and I, working 
with the Assistant Democratic Leader, have narrowed down the remaining 
Democratic amendments on this bill to a mere handful.
  We are ready to debate and vote on these Democratic amendments. The 
remaining amendments from our list are all relevant to the issues of 
bankruptcy under our unanimous consent agreement.
  It appears the majority is refusing to allow the Senate to consider 
two amendments. One by Senator Levin on firearm-related debts in 
bankruptcy and one by Senator Schumer on debts incurred through the 
commission of violence at health service clinics.
  Both of these amendments are relevant to the issue of bankruptcy.
  Senator Levin is willing to limit the time on his amendment to 70 
minutes and Senator Schumer is willing to limit the time on his 
amendment to only 30 minutes. These are very reasonable time agreement 
offers.
  I am a cosponsor of Senator Schumer's amendment, but I am not sure if 
I will support Senator Levin's amendment. But I am sure that both these 
Senators deserve to debate and vote on their relevant amendments. What 
is the majority afraid of? Vote on the amendments up or down?
  Some of the other remaining amendments focus on adding credit 
industry reforms to the bill. The millions of credit card solicitations 
made to American consumers the past few years have caused, in part, the 
rise in consumer bankruptcy filings. The credit card industry should 
bear some of this responsibility and reform its lax lending practices. 
These amendments improve the Truth In Lending Act to provide for better 
disclosure of credit information so consumers may better manage their 
debts and avoid bankruptcy altogether.
  Last year's Senate bankruptcy reform bill was fair and balanced 
because it included credit industry reforms. We should remember that 
last year's fair and balanced bill passed this chamber by a vote of 97-
1.
  We should strive to follow last year's Senate-passed bill as the 
model during the remainder of debate on this bill.
  Democrats are also ready to offer short time agreements on our 
remaining amendments if we cannot agree with the majority on them. Many 
Democratic senators are willing to offer time agreements of a half hour 
or an hour on their amendments.
  Democrats are prepared to debate this bill and vote on amendments. 
This is how the Senate works and how it should work.
  I commend Senators for coming to the floor last week and this week to 
offer their amendments. Despite hours of debate on four non-germane, 
nonrelevant amendments and party caucuses and extended morning business 
hours last week and this week, Senators from both sides of the aisle 
offered 64 amendments to improve the Bankruptcy Reform Act.
  Unfortunately, the Senate did not consider the Bankruptcy Reform Act 
yesterday or today. I do not understand why the majority is refusing to 
allow the Senate to debate this bill.
  Next year, I hope we can have a full and fair debate on the few 
remaining

[[Page S15062]]

amendments to the Bankruptcy Reform Act and then proceed to a vote on 
final passage.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, enough is enough. Hard-working American 
people are being denied common-sense legislation that they 
overwhelmingly support, because some on the Democratic side are 
insisting on votes relating to the politically charged issues of 
abortions and guns. At some point, I would hope that this will stop, 
and we can move ahead with the people's agenda, instead of trying to 
win political points.
  We have been on the bankruptcy bill for two weeks now. The Democrats 
demanded the ability to have votes on other politically motivated, non-
relevant issues. We debated and had a vote on minimum wage. We have 
agreed to or voted on 31 Democrat amendments. These are amendments in 
addition to the Grassley-Torricelli package amendment which included 
numerous other provisions insisted upon by the Democrats.
  This is a fair, bipartisan bill, drafted jointly by Senators 
Grassley, Torricelli, Biden and Sessions. This legislation was 
developed in a fair and inclusive manner. With the more than 31 
amendments, plus additional amendments jointly developed by Republicans 
and Democrats, such as the Grassley-Torricelli healthcare amendment, 
the Hatch-Torricelli domestic and child support amendment, the Hatch-
Dodd amendment on protecting educational savings accounts, among many 
others, this is a much improved bill that provides unprecedented 
consumer protections, while preserving the bankruptcy system for those 
who truly need it. What also is included in this bill are unprecedented 
consumer disclosures that are not even bankruptcy related, but are 
banking law amendments which Senators Torricelli and Grassley have 
taken the leadership to develop, and I commend them for that.
  Mr. President, throughout the process of consideration of this bill, 
at both the drafting stage, at the Committee level, and here on the 
floor, we have worked hard to address any concerns any member has with 
the bill. Senators Grassley, Lott and I have been more than patient and 
cooperative. It is apparent, however, that efforts were underway to 
defeat this important legislation this year by insisting on extraneous 
political agenda items, regardless of all the progress we made.
  We are open to further debate. But this bill, which the Minority had 
said would only take two days to complete, was on the floor for two 
weeks. They did not agree to a time limit for debate, but it is now 
clear why that was.
  I hope we can get the cooperation of the Minority to drop their 
remaining politically-motivated items and pass legislation early next 
year that provides meaningful and much-needed reform to the bankruptcy 
system. Rampant bankruptcy filings are a big problem, and last year 
over 1.4 million Americans filed for bankruptcy. In the same year, 
about $45 billion in consumer debt was erased in personal bankruptcies. 
Under current law, families who do not file for bankruptcy are unfairly 
having to subsidize those who do. This is our opportunity to do 
something about it. I would hope that my colleagues would take the time 
over these next few months and consider the desires of the American 
public. Let's do what is right and pass this important legislation 
early next year. Thank you.
  Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, let me observe one of the problems we had in 
not being able to complete it even this week. While the sponsors of 
some of the amendments had indicated--or maybe all the amendments--
indicated a willingness to have limited time agreements, we had, I 
know, at least a couple of Senators on this side who were not willing 
to agree to limit the time, therefore possibly tying up half a day or a 
day one a couple of these amendments.
  We may still be able to work out something where we could have a 
short time agreed to on both sides and get a vote after the first of 
the year. But you reach a point, in the final days of a session, where 
motions are such that you just cannot get that kind of agreement.

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