Jack Kingston: “I want to make a few closing points that I think are very important. Number one, on the question of 1985, it has been…”

“I want to make a few closing points that I think are very important. Number one, on the question of 1985, it has been called an arbitrary date. It is not an arbitrary date. That is the date of the electronic records. If my colleagues do not like the 1985 date, what date do they want? 1980, 1975, 1979? And then with that gap, what records will you have? If you have the records for the period prior to 1985 to any other date certain, please come up with it. Number two, this does not preclude claims that happened before 1985. It simply gets us started. Number three, we are looking at now making real progress, getting the job done, or at least taking the first very significant step at a cost of about $900 million versus a cost of $2.4 billion. Earlier, on this bill, last night, we had lots of debate and heartaches about the money this bill was spending. It seems odd to me that now people would say, well, let us just spend $1.5 billion. And that money, as the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Dicks) has pointed out, may never get to the people who we all want to get the money to eventually. It has been said that the lawyers are not making money. Well, lawyers do tend to do things for a profit. The court monitors in 2001, for example, were paid about $342,000. The court monitor was paid $342,000 and the special master was paid $354,000. That is compensation well over $400,000 a year.”