Political Quotes

“I address these remarks to the President, and through him to my distinguished colleague from Alabama, who is opposed to this bill, and I hope to all Senators or to their staffs, because I hope and trust that this will be the final amendment with which we will deal on this bill, as we are to vote cloture on the Coverdell substitute at 4 o'clock. But as the proponents of product liability hope that Coverdell will be amended as per this proposal by Senator Rockefeller and myself, I believe I should outline the key changes between the Coverdell proposal of last Friday and this one, because either before or after cloture it will be this amendment which becomes the final product liability vehicle for the Senate to vote on. We can discuss a bit later all of the details of the proposal. But as the Senate will remember, last week what had started out to be a product liability bill was very considerably expanded, first by an amendment by Senator Abraham from Michigan on relationships between lawyers and clients with respect to their fees and, second, by a proposal with respect to civil procedure 11 on frivolous lawsuits. But more significantly, there was added an entirely new set of provisions on medical malpractice--a new medical malpractice code--to override, in many respects, the codes of the States.”