Madam Speaker, I appreciate the goal of the bill. I think it is an admirable goal because employees are sometimes the ones who lose out in cases of bankruptcies. However the question and concern I have is about the number of bankruptcies a year, at about 11,000 that is indicated by the information. Of those, how many actually do leave the employees in the lurch? Is there an average percentage or number?
From my own business experience, it is very common that most companies going into bankruptcy do have options. They have options sometimes of paying employees, paying key suppliers or protecting their own personal loans and securities. They have these options and that is just a reality. To come back afterwards on those is extremely difficult.
However with those types of options my concern is too that if the great majority of companies that would be subject to this, or of the 10,000 businesses a year now that do pay out their employees, would there be some monitoring in the future to see if the percentage changes or shifts, to see if this does not actually help those potential bankruptcy companies to off-load the responsibility onto the government, viewing this more as, in effect, an additional revenue source that they can use on their last minute bailout? Will there be monitoring of those circumstances?