Austin Scott: “In closing, Mr. Speaker, let me again thank my colleague, Congressman Neugebauer, for his distinguished work on this. It…”

“In closing, Mr. Speaker, let me again thank my colleague, Congressman Neugebauer, for his distinguished work on this. It has been a pleasure. Again, as he articulated eloquently a few minutes ago, the two things that this bill really does is it helps American consumers by increasing competition in the marketplace--that is really what we need as we deal with the very topical issue of insurance. And it provides the American people, the American consumer, with choice. So competition and choice are certainly the great beneficiaries of this legislation. I might add that our act has garnered support from both sides of the aisle. We have both Democrats and Republicans working together on this. Forty-eight of us are sponsors to this bill, and 27 of us belong to the Financial Services Committee, where we have done work on it. This bill has the support of NAIC, as I said earlier. It shows that the State insurance regulators, themselves, believe that this type of legislation has needed reform. In addition, the Independent Insurance Agents and Brokers of America supports this bill.”