Senate Minority Leader McConnell and his leadership PAC, “The Bluegrass Committee,” have received more than $535,000 from commercial banking and the finance/credit industries over his four terms in office. Top donors include credit card issuers MBNA, Citibank, Capital One, and Bank of America – all lenders that were particularly active in the legislative fight.

Senators typically raise most of their campaign cash in the final two years of their six year terms. McConnell last ran for Senate in 2002 and is up for reelection in 2008. Notably, he has already raised $169,250 from the commercial banking and credit/finance industries during the 2005-2006 election cycle, a full two years before his re-election race, and just after the passage of the bankruptcy bill.

At one New York fundraising luncheon in the fall of 2004 only a few months prior to the bill’s passage, McConnell received about $60,000 from executives at two financial giants, UBS and Citigroup, which successfully lobbied Senate Republicans for their bankruptcy bill. This and similar events are scheduled by McConnell’s fund-raising office, run by former banking lobbyist Alison Crombie Kinnahan.[i]

McConnell and other supporters contend the bill was necessary to stop bankruptcy fraud. Yet 90 percent of people who declare bankruptcy do so because of job loss, medical expenses (due to inadequate or lack of health insurance), or divorce. The law makes no such exceptions for these circumstances. In fact, Senator McConnell beat back efforts to amend the bill that would have exempted the elderly, members of the military, single mothers, and long term care providers.

When the bill was sure of passage in the Senate, Senator McConnell celebrated by saying, “It’s quite exciting. It’s been a good day.”[ii] It certainly was a good day for the credit card companies.