By Shane Goldmacher and
“Senator Elizabeth Warren on Tuesday announced a plan to roll back provisions in a 2005 bankruptcy law, reviving a debate she had 15 years ago with Joseph R. Biden Jr., a United States senator at the time, over consumer protections and the credit card industry.
Bankruptcy is a critical part of the political origin story of Ms. Warren, whose new plan would make it easier for families to file for bankruptcy and increase accountability for creditors. A former law professor who studied the issue as an academic, she first went to Washington as part of a blue-ribbon commission to review related laws in the 1990s.
She spent a decade resisting industry efforts to tighten bankruptcy rules until such legislation, supported by Mr. Biden, passed in 2005 despite opposition from consumer groups, making it harder for many Americans to file for bankruptcy. She has portrayed the battle as something of a political baptism in which she learned firsthand about a broken American system influenced by money and power that she is now campaigning to overhaul.
But despite its central role in her life — and Mr. Biden’s position as the national front-runner for the Democratic Party’s nomination for most of 2019 — Ms. Warren has scarcely brought up her specific bankruptcy battles with Mr. Biden, which included testifying before his committee. In the plan she outlined on Tuesday, Ms. Warren would ease bankruptcy rules, allow students to declare student debt as part of any bankruptcy filing, and let more families keep their homes and cars while declaring bankruptcy.”
