Beginning next month, Bank of America will charge its customers an interest rate of 29.49% if they miss two payments or go over the credit line twice in a twelve month period and it will raise the cash advance interest rate to 21.49%. The bottom line: Bank of American customers pay some of the highest rates and fees in the country.

On March 1, Bank of America announced to those same customers that it had lost personal financial data for over one million consumers. That’s one million people who, through no fault of their own, are now extremely vulnerable to the 21st century threat of identity theft. And the threat is genuine. The Federal Trade Commission estimates that 10 million people are victimized by identity theft each year. Identity theft costs the US economy billions of dollars annually.

But by all indications, Bank of America and other supporters of S.256 simply don’t care. When Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL) introduced an amendment “to exempt debtors from means testing if their financial problems were caused by identity theft,” Bank of America’s lobbyists ensured that it didn’t pass.

Search the full text of S.256 for the phrase “identity theft.” You’ll find one reference in Section 234, a reference that has nothing to do with protecting American families from the dangers of identity theft.

Nobody – Democrats, Republicans or otherwise – denies that the bankruptcy code could be improved. At the very least, it should be updated to reflect new financial realities which have emerged in the last 25 years. But with amendment after amendment, this bill’s supporters rejected common sense improvements and preserved a bill that eliminates protections so as to maximize revenues.