Political Quotes

“I never once said that this is redundant. What I said was there is language in the bill that protects an individual from being sued, a business from being sued by an individual, if they ate tainted meat. But the gentleman's amendment would prohibit a company from having the protection of this bill if at any time they ever sold one single downed animal or bought from a company that had processed one downed animal. That covers every single circumstance of every single company that is engaged in food processing in the country. So obviously the gentleman's amendment, no matter what his underlying intent is, and his underlying intent has nothing to do with obesity, whatever the gentleman's underlying intent is, the effect of his amendment is to kill this bill because it would remove protection that is desired by 89 percent of the American people that we are coming forward with to do today from every single company in the food process because it does not require a willful and malicious intent; it just says all you had to do was distribute it once in the entire history of your company from this day forward, and you lose that protection under the law. This is a foolish, ridiculous amendment, and I urge my colleagues to reject it. The purpose of the legislation before us is to protect the food industry from having to defend themselves from frivolous obesity-related lawsuits.”