Duncan Faircloth: “We have been on this now for several hours, and we have come down to two things: Should we abrogate contracts or not?…”

“We have been on this now for several hours, and we have come down to two things: Should we abrogate contracts or not? They say they are contracts with these attorneys, they have made these contracts. Well, maybe they have. But we are writing 750 pages of law abrogating contracts that the tobacco companies have written with advertising agencies, every condition conceivable. It is 750 pages of abrogating contracts. Now, if anyone can sit here and tell me that they believe that $88,000 an hour, which is the established fee on the Texas attorneys, is a reasonable fee, now, this is being paid by taxpayers' dollars; we are collecting this money from the working people. Seventy percent, as has been said by Senator Gramm and many others, 70 percent of it is coming from people making less than $40,000 a year. This is Federal tax dollars. It might not have started out to have been Federal tax dollars, but that is what it has become when we tax cigarettes and put the tax on these people. When I look at the reality, as I believe was mentioned by Senator Gramm, when a Texas lawyer makes in 3 hours more than the President makes in a year, and a Texas lawyer makes more in an hour and a half than a U.S. Senator makes in a year, there is something wrong with the system.”