[Peace-discuss] Business as usual (II)

[C. G. Estabrook]

	The New York Times
	August 25, 2008
	
[....]

During the years that Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. was helping the credit card 
industry win passage of a law making it harder for consumers to file for 
bankruptcy protection, his son had a consulting agreement that lasted five years 
with one of the largest companies pushing for the changes, aides to Senator 
Barack Obama’s presidential campaign acknowledged Sunday.

Mr. Biden’s son, Hunter, received consulting fees from the MBNA Corporation from 
2001 to 2005 for work on online banking issues. Aides to Mr. Obama, who chose 
Mr. Biden as his vice-presidential running mate on Saturday, would not say how 
much the younger Mr. Biden, who works as both a lawyer and lobbyist in 
Washington, had received, though a company official had once described him as 
having a $100,000 a year retainer. But Obama aides said he had never lobbied for 
MBNA and that there was nothing improper about the payments.

Campaign officials acknowledged that the connection between the Bidens and MBNA, 
the enormous financial services company then based in their home state of 
Delaware, was one of the most sensitive issues they examined while vetting the 
senator for a spot on the ticket.

[....]

Consumer advocates say that Senator Biden was one of the first Democratic 
leaders to support the bankruptcy bill, and he voted for it four times — in 
1998, 2000, 2001 and in March 2005, when its final version passed the Senate by 
a vote of 74 to 25.

Travis Plunkett, legislative director of the Consumer Federation of America, a 
consumer group that opposed the bill, said that Senator Biden had provided a 
“veneer of bipartisanship” that eventually helped the credit card companies win 
over other Democrats. “He provided cover to other Democrats to do what the 
credit industry was urging them to do,” Mr. Plunkett said.

[....]

Mr. Wade said Senator Biden took extra steps to protect consumers in votes to 
require people in bankruptcy to continue paying child support or alimony. He 
also took steps to affirm that the bill exempted debtors who have serious 
medical problems, are veterans or are in the armed service, the aide said.

But a review of the legislative record finds as many instances when Mr. Biden 
joined Republicans to defeat attempts by his Democratic colleagues, including 
Mr. Obama, to soften the bill’s impact on those same constituencies. He was one 
of five Democrats in March 2005 who voted against a proposal to require credit 
card companies to provide more effective warnings to consumers about the 
consequences of paying only the minimum amount due each month. Mr. Obama voted 
for it.

Mr. Biden also went against Mr. Obama to help defeat amendments aimed at 
strengthening protections for people forced into bankruptcy who have large 
medical debts or are in the military; Mr. Biden argued that the amendments were 
unnecessary because the legislation already carved out exemptions for those 
debtors. And he was one of four Democrats who sided with Republicans to defeat 
an effort, supported by Mr. Obama, to shift responsibility in certain cases from 
debtors to the predatory lenders who helped push them into bankruptcy.

In many of these battles, Mr. Biden’s Democratic colleagues often voiced their 
frustration with the big financial interests arrayed against them. Senator Paul 
Wellstone specifically cited MBNA during a floor debate in March 2001 over his 
call for stronger protections for debtors forced into bankruptcy because of 
medical bills — an amendment that Mr. Biden would later vote against.

[....]

<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/25/us/politics/25biden.html>