Former Vice President Joe Biden bills himself as one of the regular guys and gals, but as a Democratic Senator from Delaware, he cozied up to credit card executives while championing their cause in Congress, making it tougher for average Americans to file for bankruptcy.
“Joe Biden pretends that he’s middle-class Joe, and in reality he’s corporate Joe,” Adam Levitin, a law professor at Georgetown University who specializes in bankruptcy, commercial law, and financial regulation, told the Washington Examiner.
Biden was a key architect of and whip for the 2005 Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act, which made it harder for consumers to declare bankruptcy. At the time, bankruptcy filings were at a peak of more than 2 million and legislators worried that the system was being abused. After the bill became law, bankruptcy filings fell by 70 percent.
“Someone once analogized what happened in 2005 as someone looking at a hospital and saying, ‘oh my God, emergency admissions are way up. So the solution is to reduce the hours of the emergency room,’” Bruce A. Markell, a professor of bankruptcy law and practice at Northwestern University, told the Washington Examiner.
Lenders like Citigroup, Bank of America, JP Morgan, Chase and Wells Fargo aggressively lobbied for changes to the bankruptcy code. Delaware-based credit card company MBNA, which Bank of America acquired in 2006, was one of the most ardent supporters of the bill.
Biden’s senate campaign committees received $208,175 from MBNA employees from 1989 through 2010, the second-largest source of contributions, according to the Center for Responsive Politics’ OpenSecrets.org. In the 2006 election cycle, employees from Citigroup employees donated $18,825, those from Bear Stearns donated $15,000 and from Goldman Sachs donated $10,500.
In total, Biden received $1,126,375 from those in the securities and investment industry, $304,475 from finance and credit company workers, and $295,900 from commercial bank employees.
Biden’s ties to MBNA and banks span beyond political contributions from its employees. Home sales, family jobs, and free trips caused critics to dub him “the senator from MBNA.”
In February 1996, MBNA executive John Cochran bought Biden’s home outside Wilmington for the full $1.2 million asking price, while other similarly appraised houses at the time sold for around $100,000 to $200,000 less than asking price. MBNA then paid Cochran $330,115 that year for moving expenses and noted that he lost $210,000 due to the sale of his Maryland home.
Cochran also donated $2,000 to Biden’s 1996 Senate reelection campaign, FEC records show. MBNA in 1997 flew Biden and his wife to Maine so he could give a speech, Biden’s Senate financial disclosure showed.
Biden’s son Hunter started a job MBNA in November 1996 after Biden won reelection, in part because he wanted to be close to home. After leaving the company, Hunter became a lobbyist, but continued collecting an undisclosed amount of money from MBNA as a consultant — all while the bankruptcy bill moved through Congress. MBNA said that Hunter never lobbied for them and that his work had nothing to do with the bankruptcy bill.
The Wilmington News-Journal noted in 2008 that Biden was “neighbor to wealthy and powerful company titans and du Pont family members,” one of the richest families in America.
A spokesperson for Biden did not respond to a request for comment, but in a 2008 NBC interview Biden downplayed his family’s relationships with MBNA executives and rejected the notion that he was in the “pocket of the corporate lobbyists.” Those who defended Biden’s support for the bankruptcy bill said that he was looking out for the interests of Delaware’s economy, a major financial and banking center.
Biden’s support for the 2005 bankruptcy bill sets him apart from progressive Democrats running for president and other Democratic leaders in Congress. Independent then-Rep. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Democratic Sens. Dianne Feinsten of California, Barack Obama of Illinois, and Chuck Schumer of New York all voted against the bill. Elizabeth Warren, not yet a senator, fought against the changes.
“The bill was a big, fat, wet kiss for credit card companies and auto lenders. It ensured that private student loans could not be discharged in bankruptcies,” Levitin said. “It also exacerbated risky mortgage lending.”
New York Federal Reserve researchers later said that the bankruptcy bill could have been a contributing factor in destabilization that led to the subprime mortgage crisis. Analysts have said that the bill made private student loans a lucrative business and linked the bill to the rise in retail businesses filing for bankruptcy.
“Biden’s got some explaining to do, I think, to the Democratic electorate,” said Levitin, the Georgetown University law professor. “I don’t think millennials in particular have kind of pieced together that Biden’s involved with their student loan debt.”
It is difficult, however, to show what kind of direct benefit the bankruptcy bill had on banks and lenders. Markell said that most of the effects from bill are not quantifiable.
“I think the tragedy is the people who needed, could have used bankruptcy to make themselves better and more productive, and couldn’t,” Markell said.
