In 1978, Congress created a bankruptcy law that was quite generous toward debtors

National Review, March 28, 2005

* In 1978, Congress created a bankruptcy law that was quite generous toward debtors. Too generous: Under this law, the number of people filing bankruptcy has soared--it's up fivefold over the last two decades. Increased bankruptcy rates hurt consumers of credit. They lead to increased interest rates on credit cards, to higher down payments for auto loans, and to higher penalty fees.

So now Congress is considering a bill that would make it harder for people who have the means to repay their debts to get out of them through bankruptcy. It is estimated that it would affect 7 to 10 percent of bankruptcy filers. But even that is too much for many Democrats, who say that the bill is a gift to the credit-card industry and too hard on consumers. They minimize the abuse of bankruptcy filing, portraying all the bankrupts as hard-luck cases. No doubt many of them are. But hard luck has not increased by a factor of five since the 1980s This is a bill that deserves to pass.