Biden's son was bank consultant while senator backed tougher bankruptcy law

Barack Obama's presidential campaign said Biden helped forge a bipartisan compromise on the law, which makes it harder for consumers to obtain bankruptcy protection in the courts.

MBNA's consulting payments to Hunter Biden, first reported by the New York Times, followed his departure in 2001 from the company, where he had been an executive.

Obama opposed the bankruptcy law, enacted in 2005. Biden supported it.

David Wade, a spokesman for the Obama campaign, said that "after working in the Clinton administration in the Department of Commerce on Internet privacy and online commerce issues, Hunter consulted for five years as an expert on these very same issues at a time of enormous expansion in online banking."

Consumer and civil rights groups and unions as well as Democratic opponents had argued that the bankruptcy legislation was unfair to low-income working people, single mothers, minorities and the elderly and would remove a safety net for those who lost their jobs or faced mounting medical bills.

The financial services industry contended that bankruptcy frequently is a refuge of gamblers, impulsive shoppers, divorced or separated fathers avoiding child support, and multimillionaires who buy mansions in states with liberal exemptions to shelter assets from creditors.

MBNA employees have given more than $200,000 to Biden's Senate campaigns over the last two decades, making donors working for the credit card company the senator's largest source of campaign money.