Barbara Boxer: “there is an extraordinary thing about the bill we are debating. For the first time in history, makers of a product are…”

“there is an extraordinary thing about the bill we are debating. For the first time in history, makers of a product are being given a waiver of all liability essentially, if something in that product goes wrong in the future. For anyone who cares about consumers and communities, this is a terrible situation because we do not know what is going to happen with ethanol. Now, I am not in the least bit hostile to ethanol. I think it is an exciting possibility that we can help our farmers and we can have a good additive that cleans the air. I know it opens up an opportunity, for example, for my rice growers that they can make ethanol from rice. So I am not at all hostile. In fact, most of my friends know, in the pro-ethanol caucus, as I call them, that I am the one who led the fight to ban MTBE because it is so damaging to the water supply. What concerns me is giving the makers of this product carte blanche to walk away if in the future we find out there is a problem.”