From the Salmon

and above 96th street,
they’re handing out smallpox blankets
so people don’t freeze
the old dogs they got a new trick
it’s called criminalize the symptoms
while you spread the disease

Ani DiFranco — “Tis of Thee” from Up Up Up Up Up Up

It’s ba-ack. It sounds like the bankruptcy bill will get a vote in the House this week, after the House leadership allowed little to no debate and no amendments. The vote may come as early as Wednesday. Those of you who have hung round these parts for a while already know how I feel about this. But I wanted to take one more look at the context of what bothers me about this bill and the party that is advocating for it.

Previously, I discussed a series of articles by Peter Gosselin in the Los Angeles Times that highlighted the rising economic risk that American households face. One of Gosselin’s conclusions is that over the last two or three decades, companies have become very sophisticated in charting, calculating, and avoiding risk. And in the interest of promoting an economy with minimal fluctuation, our government has been happy to assist them in this effort.

But at what cost? Gosselin writes:

Although the overall economy has become steadier — settling into a pattern of long swells of growth followed by relatively gentle dips — the incomes of working people have been beset by ever-larger fluctuations. Looked at in this way, “we haven’t reduced economic risks” at all, said Harvard economist Martin L. Weitzman. “We’ve simply redistributed them from the economy as a whole to individual households.”

Is this really what we want? As individual households, we don’t have the sophisticated risk-planning tools available to corporations. And in the face of this growing instability for American families, especially for the working poor, the current administration has often helped make this instability worse: by cutting unemployment benefits, by not stepping up to help the 40 to 50 million Americans who have no health insurance, by not raising the minimum wage, by attacking safety regulations and overtime and on and on....

That this bill will pass is sadly a foregone conclusion. So why am I still writing about this? My more conservative friends ask me from time to time what has soured me to the Republican party. That’s another whole set of posts, perhaps one I will get to someday. But part of the answer to that question can be found in this very trend.

Look at the top domestic priorities for the newly-elected Bush administration and its Republican congressional counterparts. Their first act was to pass a bill limiting class-action lawsuits, again reducing corporate risk at the expense of a check on practices that can cause widespread consumer harm. Their second act: the bankruptcy bill. And the biggest priority of all is a vague privatization plan for Social Security that will, by many reports, reduce guaranteed benefits while increasing individual risk.

This isn’t a mistake, it’s a strategy.

And in the face of this rising instability for households, it’s no wonder that the bankruptcy rate is increasing. Last month, in the midst of the Senate debate over the bankruptcy bill, Kash at Angry Bear posted a message from a bankruptcy attorney who said in part:

The bankruptcy filing rate is a symptom, not the disease. Some people do abuse the system, but there is already a method to deal with that. The vast majority of people file because of job loss, inadequate retirement savings, medical expenses, and divorce. The fastest growing group of debtors is the elderly. More than 50% of those 65 or older who file for bankruptcy do so because of medical debt. Just come to any court day of any week, and you will see the court room filled with people who depend entirely on Medicare and Social Security. In addition to the elderly, families with children will be the most hurt by this bill; the presence of children in the household increases the likelihood of bankruptcy by 302%.

The bankruptcy filing rate is a symptom, not the disease. And our goverment is taking action, not to heal the disease, but to criminalize the symptoms.

Update: Vote scheduled for today. Sounds like one hour of debate and no amendments allowed. Bleh.

Another Update: John Edwards gets it. The money paragraph:

Unfortunately, we know what the outcome today is going to be. But that doesn’t mean we should give up the fight — it means we have to fight harder. If we want to stop bankruptcies, we need to address their real causes, like rising health costs. We need to stop the abuses by the credit card companies and the predatory lenders. We need to make sure all families, and especially those who are poor, can build their savings and assets so they have some security if something goes wrong. It won’t be easy, but it can be done. That’s what being American is about — standing with people who are struggling to do right, and taking on anyone who tries to take advantage of them. (Emphasis mine)