Too bad an eager signature pen awaits this bill next year -- Nathan
December 19, 2000 Clinton Vetoes Bankruptcy Bill By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 3:07 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Clinton vetoed a bankruptcy overhaul bill Tuesday because he said it was unfair to ordinary debtors and working families who fall on hard times.
The bill, passed by the House in October and the Senate this month, would make it harder for people to erase credit card and other debts in court.
``We would have liked to have seen Congress complete a bill that was balanced, that made sense, that would reform the bankruptcy system and update it,'' White House press secretary Jake Siewert said.
``Instead we got a bill that was badly flawed, punished some creditors and not others, punished some debtors and not others, and lacked the balance that the president said was critical to being something that he could sign.''
By leaving the Bankruptcy Reform Act of 2000 unsigned, the president issued a ``pocket veto'' -- the fourth indirect veto of his administration.
The bill would have provided the most sweeping bankruptcy law changes in 20 years. Supporters, including the banking and credit card industries, have pushed hard for the changes over the past three years.
The legislation would have established a complex mathematical formula for determining whether debtors could repay part of their debts under a court-supervised plan rather than have them dissolved.
Proponents cited a rapid rise in personal bankruptcy filings in the mid-1990s, which reached a peak of 1.4 million in 1998, as evidence of abuse of the current system.