Elizabeth Furse: “Mr. Chairman, in case Members have not been following the debate closely, it has been a great break for Wall Street and…”

“Mr. Chairman, in case Members have not been following the debate closely, it has been a great break for Wall Street and the advice of the day is buy insurance company stocks because this legislation is a tremendous gift to the insurance companies. The gentleman who preceded me talked about generous contributions of the Democrats to the trial lawyers and consumers groups but what he forgot was that more than 12 times as much money flowed from insurance companies and other corporations to the Republican Party. And they are getting their payoff here today. We are going to preempt the judgment of every jury in America on this floor today. The judgment of that side of the aisle is better than those 12 or 10 men and women who sit in judgment of their peers. We are throwing equal justice out the window. We are imposing caps, we are imposing discriminatory caps, caps that say, well, if you are a middle-income worker or you are a spouse or you are a child or a college student, you are worth a lot less in terms of punitive damages than a corporate executive. That is what this amendment would overturn. Otherwise we will impose that discrimination, we will give that benefit to the better off, enshrine it in Federal law. We always knew the wealthy have done better in court. Now we are going to mandate that the wealthy do better in court.”