Ninety-six percent of all people with credit card debt make their monthly payments regularly, even if not perfectly. It's only about 4 percent of credit card debtors who disappear or file for bankruptcy. The number of bankruptcies has been going down in the past few years. With average interest rates at 16 percent, it doesn't take much math to figure out that credit card issuers are making billions in interest.

Under these circumstances, about the last thing America needs at this time is so-called bankruptcy "reform" which mandates that paying back credit card companies is as important or even more important than making child care or alimony payments.

But that's what we're getting as the Senate recently took up the burning issue of how to increase the profits of the credit card issuers who have made millions of dollars of political contributions in just the past two years.

Many Americans carry too much debt, but the overwhelming majority of people who start drowning are working people who have experienced some crisis or disruption in their lives which causes the interruption in payments. And credit card issuers relentlessly push their products to young people and others vulnerable to addiction in a society addicted to ownership and to debt. I can't log onto my Internet service provider without being offered at least one credit card, and I can't open my e-mail without seeing some kind of debt consolidation offer. You can gamble or shop or hire a prostitute with your credit cards. Credit card companies finance every kind of addiction and then buy the name of sports arenas.

Every industry builds non-payments and other losses into their bottom line, and the credit card industry is no exception. And credit card issuers don't lose big money on non-payers. They sell their "bad paper" to other credit card companies and everything is written off on taxes anyway.

The final version of the new law is yet to be seen. The House and the President are already on board; it'll only be a matter of working out details which assure easy passage with the least amount of fuss or publicity. It'll just be a little blip on your nightly Sports-Weather-Fire news show.

This whole thing is a symptom of a Congress woefully out of touch with anything like human existence in America today. I'd like to be able to say that this was the Republican Party's doing, but my own Democratic Party, addicted to the money and the trough, raced the Republicans to viciousness on this one. New York's senators voted for the final bill, even though both opposed "bankruptcy reform" last year. They won a provision to bar people who are convicted of violating abortion clinic protection laws from using bankruptcy to avoid paying fines. The national parties are fusing, one wing having more tax cut proponents and one wing having more proponents of reproductive freedoms.

And both wings morally, spiritually and ethically bankrupt. Let's reform that bankruptcy first.

Michael Miller was formerly Director of Public Affairs for the Town of North Hempstead. He is a public relations consultant.