A Modest Proposal: Rendition for the Bankrupt

The bankruptcy bill is progressing in Congress, and looks to be on the verge of final passage. Although I have never had to declare bankruptcy, I am certainly vulnerable, given my position as a debtor and a paycheck-to-paycheck person. It has been interesting to watch our honorable representatives in Congress portraying people like me as the lowest form of cheaters and thieves.

According to the pontificators of Congress, banks graciously provide the poor and middle class with credit cards out of the goodness of their hearts, wanting only to offer a little convenience to ease their lives, wanting only to trust them…and what do people do? They go out and spend like crazy, live the high life until the monthly minimum payments start to cramp their high-rolling lifestyle, and then they swindle those poor trusting banks out of their money. O, the injustice! No wonder these poor banks and credit card companies have to spend millions in campaign contributions just to try and get a fair shake.

Our reps in Congress don’t want to hear any excuses. All that stuff about how a third of personal bankruptcies are suffered by families who are already impoverished under federal standards? Balderdash! Or that Harvard study that found that nearly half of personal bankruptcies are the result of illness or medical bills? Nonsense! Those other studies that show divorced women are 300% more likely to end up in bankruptcy than single or married women due to reduced income, loss of health insurance and increased childcare costs? Piffle and twaddle! The study showing that persistent discrimination in mortgage lending is a major factor in Black and Latino homeowners being 500% more likely to end up in bankruptcy court than white homeowners? Give me a break!

It’s obvious to our honorable representatives in Congress that these lowlifes are gaming the system. They don’t want to hear any phony excuses about job loss, divorce or tumors. If card companies are kind enough to flood your mailbox with dozens of pre-approved credit applications each year, then it’s your responsibility to contribute to increasing the $30 billion in profit they made last year. And if you’re ever late with a payment, aren’t the card companies thoughtful enough to give you a little reminder in the form of penalty interest rates of 20-30%? Of course. But do you heed these warnings? No! You have the audacity to be driven even deeper into debt.

What, do these credit card deadbeats think it’s still the 1960s and 1970s, when the average family spent only 56% of its income on fixed expenses like housing, insurance, childcare and transportation, when people dealt with unexpected disruptions to their income by drawing on savings or sending a spouse out to get a second income? Well, welcome to the new millennium, people! Nowadays, fixed expenses eat up 74% of the average family’s income, both spouses already are working to make ends meet, and as for savings…well, since the credit card companies in the past 20 years have pushed to put plastic in the hands of everyone whether they had the income to manage it or not, savings in the United States has zeroed out and household debt has skyrocketed. Hey, babycakes, if you didn’t manage to get rich in the United States during the 80s and 90s, that’s your fault.

The plight of the poor credit card companies is so heartbreaking that I don’t think the bankruptcy bill goes far enough. Financial ruin is too good for these deadbeats. I think we should take a page from the Pentagon and the CIA: rendition. That’s right. When the military and intelligence services need to be able to say with a straight face that the United States doesn’t torture people, they use ‘rendition’ to outsource the torture of detainees to countries where they don’t have any pesky laws to hamstring the hamstringing.

So lets put an end to bankruptcy as an option for the lower and middle classes (the rich, of course, should still be able to conceal their assets and avoid their responsibilities—they’ve earned that right). Instead, let’s ship these deadbeats off to countries where they’ll get what they deserve. Surely some countries must still have debtor prisons. Or we can send them to where they’ll have their hands chopped off for being thieves, or forced to live in a cardboard shanty in some sprawling slum, or have their limbs deformed so as to make a better living as a beggar.

C’mon, Congress. You can do it. Cleanse America of these deadbeats who think that being impoverished and facing financial ruin means they can put something over on the government or big business. It’s not like you ever have to worry about their campaign contributions…