Jay Rockefeller: “I am very happy that the Senate, at long last, is taking this bill up. We have been here before; we have been here many…”

“I am very happy that the Senate, at long last, is taking this bill up. We have been here before; we have been here many times before. I wish we could have gotten here sooner this year. Nevertheless, I am glad we are here. I think there is a natural tendency in Congress to wait until absolutely the last minute before important decisions are made, and that is what we are doing again this time. But so be it. I am here to report to my colleagues that the Senate product liability bill has maintained the Senate's standard, which is products only. It has to be fair. It cannot include a whole lot of extra things that the Contract With America wanted, or that others wanted, or, indeed, that earlier generations within this body tried to add on to this bill. It was always my intention--and it was always the intention of the Senator from the State of Washington--to keep this bill disciplined, on products only, not to expand and include all kinds of other subjects, so that we could keep faith with our colleagues. I believe we have done that. All of this is now embodied in H.R. 956, the commonsense product liability legal reform bill. I am enormously proud of the fact that the Senate really does want to see meaningful product liability reform, to fix our broken products system.”