Political Quotes

“Mr. Chair, I appreciate the sentiment, but the amendment is unnecessary. The bill's terms clearly already do nothing to prevent post-dispute arbitration agreements from being negotiated or enforced, in theory. Honestly, the amendment really does nothing. It is a fig leaf designed to hide the mischief that is actually being done by the bill. It pretends to preserve the possibility of negotiating agreements to arbitrate once disputes arise, but if this bill succeeds in wiping out pre-dispute arbitration agreements, parties will almost never ever arbitrate. And the simple reason is, if one person really wants to be in arbitration, the other person will be really disadvantaged by arbitration. In order to have a post-dispute arbitration, you need both parties to agree. And the simple fact is, that once a dispute arises, there is always going to be a benefit for one of the parties to go to court. And most of the time, it is not going to be the consumer or the employee that sees these advantages. It will be a company or an employee with the resources to overwhelm a consumer or an employee in court with discovery, procedure, and expensive lawyer fees. And far too often, just the prospect of that will be enough to dissuade a consumer or employee from even filing a lawsuit to begin with, which means that the parties with the deepest pockets will just be able to get off scot-free.…”