[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 131 (Monday, August 7, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S11730-S11731]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                       TRIBUTE TO LEWIS A. ENGMAN

  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, on July 12, I lost a friend.
  And the country lost a man who had served with energy and integrity, 
in both the public and private sectors.
  Lewis A. Engman, ``Lew'' to the many friends he leaves from 25 years 
in Washington, was taken suddenly by stroke.
  He left life well before his time. Had he lived longer, I know Lew 
would have used it fighting for the strong principles that guided all 
his professional life.
  Lew believed in competition and free markets.
  An antitrust lawyer and economist by training, Lew saw competition 
and free markets as the consumer's most efficient and effective 
protection.
  As Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission in the early 1970's, Lew 
was one of the first Government officials to observe that some Federal 
regulatory agencies had become servants of the industries they 
regulated, that they were more adept at propping up prices than 
protecting the consumer.
  As much as anyone, Lew Engman was responsible for setting in motion 
the current movement against overregulation.
  While a prophet of deregulation, Lew never took a doctrinaire, anti-
Government stance. He liked to distinguish between regulations that 
improve competitive markets rather than those which substitute for the 
market--supporting the former, opposing the latter.
  Another principle that guided Lew was his commitment to full 
disclosure, accuracy, and truthfulness. Information, in Lew's view, 
made markets function. Without full, dependable price and product 
information, consumers were defenseless, Lew often said. Lew never 
wavered--not at the Federal Trade Commission, nor later as 

[[Page S 11731]]
president of two pharmaceutical associations--in his defense of the 
consumer's right to know.
  Lew and I became friends during the negotiations that led to 
enactment of the Drug Price Competition and Patent Term Restoration Act 
of 1984, a bill I was proud to author with Representative Henry Waxman.
  The 1984 law addressed two seemingly competing needs: The need for 
brand name pharmaceutical companies to regain the patent life they had 
lost awaiting FDA approval of their products; and the interests of the 
fledgling generic drug industry in speeding their products to market as 
soon as the innovator patent had expired.
  We faced this challenge--how to balance the research-based drug 
industry's desire for patent lives adequate to encourage research 
against the generic industry's desire to put competing copies on the 
market as soon as possible--we faced this challenge head-on.
  It was a complicated issue, and indeed a challenge. The public wants 
newer and better drugs, and that necessitates adequate research, which, 
quite simply, is costly. At the same time, consumers also want less 
expensive drugs.
  Lew represented the research firms. It was not easy--they had varying 
interests. But his political acumen, and his personal belief in 
competition, got the job done.
  In short, Lew had a fine line to walk, and he walked it with honor 
and courage.
  In the end, Lew's refusal to break his promise to support a 
compromise, a compromise that had been worked out between the House, 
Senate, and industry, cost Lew his job. He left it head high, integrity 
intact.
  It would take pages to list all Lew's achievements, from selection by 
Time magazine in 1974 as one of the country's young men to watch, 
through a career as a top Washington official. But Lew's was not a life 
to measure in jobs and titles, but rather by the thread that ran 
through it all.
  It is a comfortable thing for a man to know who he is and what he 
believes. No one who knew Lew could believe he died anything but 
comfortable.
  I will miss Lew Engman. My heart goes out to his wife, Pat, to whom 
he was devoted, and to his three boys.
  They have lost a loving husband and father.
  We all have lost a man of principle and a fine American.
  I know that Lew will be missed by all of us.
  

                          ____________________