Kent Conrad: “Because first, I say to my colleagues, those are his words and his conclusions. I have great respect for the…”

“Because first, I say to my colleagues, those are his words and his conclusions. I have great respect for the Congressional Budget Office. I think the Senator knows that is the case. I say this in seriousness. They have been very clear with us. They have said there are areas that are extremely difficult to predict. I accept that. It is very difficult to know how many dormant claims will come out of the woodwork. But to suggest there are not going to be any is unrealistic. To say that the number of future cancer claims is going to be 78,000, when the Tillinghast study that was paid for--not by the trial bar, not by the labor unions, not by any of the companies who are against this legislation--it was paid for by the Manville trust, they said they ran 14 different scenarios, and on average there were 133,000 new cancer claims. That one change, if they are right, increases this fund from being under water by $150 billion to being under water by almost $300 billion. Finally, CBO's estimate of the percentage of nonmalignant claims-- again, this is a hard thing to know--the Tillinghast study suggests that the range will be 10 to 40 percent. The midpoint of that range is 25 percent. If you think about it, people come in and they go to their doctor and you have a situation in which they might qualify for $25,000 or even $100,000. There is going to be a tremendous tendency to push them into those categories. It is human nature.…”