On Tuesday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren released a new plan that would make it easier for people facing immense debt to seek protection through bankruptcy.

The plan highlights what has long been a signature issue for the Massachusetts senator. Its release — 27 days before the Iowa caucuses kick off the presidential primary season — also sets up a direct contrast with one of her main rivals: former Vice President Joe Biden.

In 2005, then-Sen. Biden voted for the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 which Warren fought against. The bill was sponsored by Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley and signed into law by President George W. Bush. It was opposed by most Democrats, including then-Sen. Barack Obama.

The 2005 bill has long been in Warren’s crosshairs and her latest plan is no exception. She has said that the bill was what inspired her to get into public service. After a rally in April, she reportedly said that she got directly involved in politics “because [families] just didn’t have anyone and Joe Biden was on the side of the credit card companies.”

The 2005 bill

The 2005 bankruptcy bill made it much harder to declare Chapter 7, which is the kind of personal bankruptcy that allows consumers to sell their assets to pay debts, after which their slate is clean. The bill added a means test designed to steer more people into Chapter 13 bankruptcy, which creates a multiyear payment plan, added hefty requirements for paperwork, credit counseling, requirements for attorneys, and spending limitations during the bankruptcy process that critics argue places an undue burden on families with children.

View photos President George W. Bush signs the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 in 2005 (BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images) More

The law was pursued because some members of Congress believed too many people were filing for these protections and abusing the system.

After the bill passed, bankruptcies went down 50% but the numbers of insolvent people rose by 25%, Warren says, which caused 800,000 mortgage defaults and 250,000 foreclosures.

A signature issue

Bankruptcy has long been a signature issue for Warren, even before she got into politics.

As a law professor, Warren studied bankruptcy and found that even experts had never really dug into the data. Examining thousands of bankruptcy documents from courthouses across the country, Warren found that most bankruptcy incidents don’t stem from a shirking of responsibility, but rather bad luck.

View photos Senator Elizabeth Warren and former Vice President Joe Biden during the sixth Democratic presidential debate in Los Angeles in December. REUTERS/Mike Blake More

“The data showed that nearly 90% of these families were declaring bankruptcy for one of three reasons: a job loss, a medical problem, or a family breakup,” she wrote.

Warren also wrote a 2004 book called “The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers and Fathers Are Going Broke,” with with Amelia Warren Tyagi, her daughter. The book focused on personal bankruptcy and economic insecurity.

Warren’s plan

Warren’s plan would do away with a few things in the 2005 bill that make declaring bankruptcy so difficult. First, it would remove means testing, which forces people making more than their state’s median income to file for Chapter 13 bankruptcy and involves a multiyear payment plan instead of liquidation of assets and a clean slate.