Sen. Phil Gramm, chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, said committee members will keep close tabs on banking issues and other matters within the committee's jurisdiction that may become part of bankruptcy reform legislation this year.

At the opening of today's Banking Committee hearing, Gramm said:

"In the past, it's been somewhat common for banking issues to be attached to other bills. It's been common for the appropriations subcommittee that has jurisdiction over some of our areas to legislate on those appropriations bills. We intend to end that practice on this committee.

"Clearly, one of the most important bills we're going to deal with in this Congress is bankruptcy reform. In last year's bill, we had banking provisions on the bill. What I thought we would do this year is, No. 1, listen to the principal authors of these provisions. Secondly, we want to take a look at these provisions and pray over them and see if we decide as a committee to move forward with some or all of these provisions and maybe more and have a banking amendment to the bankruptcy bill, or whether we want to try to do a separate bill. A lot of good work has been done here. Real thought has been put into this.

"If we do have banking provisions on the bankruptcy bill, we're going to have banking committee members of the conference because obviously we know our issues, and we want to have a say in how they're resolved."