Jay Rockefeller: “I rise again to report to my colleagues on our situation and to make a reflection. This morning, we conducted a series…”

“I rise again to report to my colleagues on our situation and to make a reflection. This morning, we conducted a series of rollcall votes. I believe there were eight. They all had to do with something called malpractice reform, which is not part of the product liability reform. We were able to accept two amendments, which means that we did not accept others. Those were on fairly minor issues, I might say. Of the eight amendments that required votes, the Senate adopted three by sort of an interesting variety of margins. The net result is that the product liability bill, which is the sole focus of the concern of the Senator from West Virginia, as well as the Senator from the State of Washington, now includes the malpractice proposal as offered by the Senator from Kentucky, which prevailed with 53 votes. So that means we now have a bill which has product liability in it, has malpractice reform in it. I have indicated before that I think at some point Senators are going to have to make a choice.”