Press Release - Leadership Conference on Civil Rights
LCCR Joins Advocates for Working Families at Nation's Capitol to Denounce Bankruptcy Bill
Bill Would Force Working Families Further into Debt
For Immediate Release
Contact: Scott Westbrook Simpson, 202.466.2061, simpson@civilrights.org
April 13, 2005
Washington - Nancy Zirkin, Deputy Director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the nation's oldest, largest, and most diverse civil and human rights coalition joined Congressmen Conyers (D-MI) and Nadler (D-NY) as well as a broad range of representatives from labor, the women's community and consumer watch groups at a press conference this morning. Together they called on Representatives to reject the Bankruptcy Bill (S 256) currently under consideration by the House. Zirkin explained that the bill would be devastating to working families:
"Congress should be ashamed. The President should be ashamed. But, of course, they aren't. The bankruptcy bill the House will vote on tackles still another "false" crisis, while exacerbating a very real one facing many decent families. The real bankruptcy crisis is not the 8 percent who supposedly abuse the system, but the 90-plus percent who don't.
Unless things change, roughly 1 in 10 American families will go broke in the next decade. The great majority are decent hard working people who believed their work ethic would bring them security - but lost everything because of illness or pink slips.
If Congress were serious about rising bankruptcies, it would tackle the root causes, like rising costs in health care, prescription drugs and education. But this Congress doesn't have time for those issues. Instead, they are busy doling out favors to credit card companies and corporate interests."
