Thomas Daschle: “It is counterproductive. We are concerned that in many respects the legislation before the Senate actually is a step…”

“It is counterproductive. We are concerned that in many respects the legislation before the Senate actually is a step backward from what was passed out of committee, and that was viewed by people in our country and in the Senate on both sides of the aisle as insufficient. One thing we do know is attempts to address this problem in other cases affecting other diseases has been an absolute fiasco. Ask the black lung victims today whether we did any good when we passed the black lung victims fund. If they are still alive, they will shake their heads in disbelief. Ask those victims of uranium whether we solved the problem, and again they will shake their heads and say how deeply disturbed they are with the outcome. I can recall how many Senators acclaimed these responses as finally having addressed the issue. Well, now people get sick, they die, and they have no recourse. While we know perhaps 2.6 million people could be affected by this over the next several decades, the bill before us actually reduces the compensation fund from $153 billion--and I might add parenthetically that the potential range of how much this could cost reaches $300 billion, so we are locking in a bill already that may be deficient--but we go from $153 billion down to $109 billion in the bill currently pending, which maybe one-third of what will be required to adequately deal with the compensation we already know will be needed.”