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Project asked petitioners to identify whether they owe “child support or alimony.” Unfortunately, accurate data on the number of people obliged to pay alimony in the general population are not available. In addition, some men with informal support arrangements might have answered yes in the bankruptcy questionnaire, although they would not appear in other reports on the number of men in the general population who are legally obligated to pay support. If the number of men who say that they owe support (including alimony and informal arrangements) is compared with the approximate number of men in the population whose ex-wives and ex-girlfriends report that they are owed child support (usually through a formal arrangement and excluding alimony), the filing rate for men paying child support would be 22.5 per 1,000. The number of men in the general population who owe child support is estimated at 7.1 million, which is the number of custodial mothers who were owed child support in 2000. Timothy Grall, “Custodial Mothers and Fathers and Their Child Support, 1999.”

54 Henry Hyde, news release, March 10, 1999. Available at http://www.house.gov/judiciary/031099a.htm [3/22/03].

Chapter 6

1 Elizabeth Warren, “Bankrupt? Pay Your Child Support First,” New York Times, April 27, 1998. See also Elizabeth Warren, “In Serious Jeopardy; Lies vs. Unadulterated Statistics Muddle Bankruptcy Reform,” Chicago Tribune, March 19, 1998.

2 Katharine Q. Seelye, “First Lady in a Messy Fight on the Eve of Her Campaign,” New York Times, June 27, 1999. In her book, Mrs. Clinton writes: “Proposed bankruptcy reform moving through Congress threatened to undermine the spousal and child support many women depend on.” Hillary Rodham Clinton, Living History (New York: Simon&Schuster, 2003), p. 384.

3 According to Seelye, “[Mrs. Clinton] wrote dozens of personal notes to law-makers last year as the [bankruptcy] bills made their tortuous way through the Congressional process. And she, along with Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, played what the bill’s opponents say was a decisive role in helping to kill the legislation last year.” Seelye, “First Lady in a Messy Fight.”

4 Corporations do not contribute directly, but their employees make coordinated contributions. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported: “By orchestrating mass contributions from its employees, the Wilmington-based company has become Bush’s single largest source of campaign money. MBNA employees have given more than $250,000 to the Republican’s presidential bid, an Inquirer analysis found.” Robert Zausner and Josh Goldstein, “Bush’s Largest Funding Source: Employees of Credit Card Firm,” Philadelphia Inquirer, July 28, 2000, p. A1.

5 Senator Clinton claimed in her press release that she supported passage of the bankruptcy bill because “I have worked with a number of people over the past three years to make improvements.” She then cited a provision that moved child support claims higher in the distributional pecking order in bankruptcy, by permitting single mothers to stand first in line for distributions from the liquidation of an ex-husband’s assets. Office of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, “Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton Statement for the Record,” news release, March 15, 2001. While this amendment may have provided some political cover, it offers virtually no financial help to single mothers, since the overwhelming majority of ex-husbands don’t pay anything in distributions during bankruptcy. Of far more importance was the fact that the bill would permit credit card companies to compete with women after bankruptcy for their ex-husbands’ limited income, and this provision remained unchanged in the 1998 and 2001 versions of the bill. Senator Clinton claimed that the bill improved circumstances for single mothers, but her view was not shared by any women’s groups or consumer groups.

6 Alexander Bolton, “Bankruptcy Bill Is Conflict for Daschle,” The Hill, March 14, 2001.

7 Consumer nonrevolving debt grew from $500 billion in 1993 to $1 trillion in 2002 (not adjusted for inflation).