[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 53 (Thursday, April 22, 2004)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4240-S4241]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          OBSTRUCTION TACTICS

  Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I rise to express my concern about what 
seems to be an all-too-apparent pattern in the Senate when we earnestly 
try to work together to bring up issues that are important to the 
future of this country, such as the jobs in manufacturing bill, the FSC 
bill, where we have been trying to avoid more tariffs, which now have 
been levied against many manufacturers by the European Union, that are 
increasing month by month. We are trying to get a bill passed to help 
our manufacturers, to help our manufacturing economy, and that is being 
blocked on the floor of the Senate.
  Medical liability: We have had three votes just to bring the bill up 
to discuss it, to discuss an issue that is devastating my State. I have 
had numerous town meetings across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. 
Doctors, nurses, health professionals, hospital administrators, 
patients, and patient groups are coming and saying: We have to do 
something to deal with the skyrocketing cost of health insurance as a 
result of medical liability insurance costs.
  We have lost 1,100 doctors in Pennsylvania alone. We have great 
medical schools, but we are almost last in the country now in 
physicians under the age of 35. Yet we produce--next to New York and 
California, maybe Texas--more young physicians than any other State in 
the country. It is a huge problem; yet we can't even debate it in the 
Senate because we are being blocked.
  Energy is another one. It came very close. We worked out a bipartisan 
bill. It had bipartisan support. We couldn't get an energy bill passed 
because of a filibuster in the Senate. The same is true with workforce 
investment. We passed it. It is being blocked from going to conference. 
That is a new obstruction tactic which is a sort of bait and switch. It 
is the idea that, yes, we will give you this, we will pass it, and then 
after everybody believes we passed it and we have done our job, we are 
not allowed to go to conference to work out the differences between the 
two bodies. So we can't get a bill done.
  We have talked about judges over and over and spent many late nights 
here talking about the obstructionism. Again, it is a new tactic, a new 
level of obstruction heretofore never seen in the Senate--requiring 
judges to get 60 votes for confirmation. So we have this new threshold 
for judges. We have a new threshold for passing legislation which is 
not allowing us to go to conference and requiring a 60-vote majority to 
go to conference, not to pass a bill, not to bring a bill up. It is 
obstruction on top of obstruction.
  We had a bipartisan welfare reform bill we were working on. We were 
working to do more for daycare--many on the other side of the aisle 
wanted to do that--$7 billion more for daycare, a huge increase in 
daycare funding with a very small increase in work requirement and in 
participation standards. It was blocked on the floor of the Senate.
  On class action we came close--one vote. Again, we came close; not 
51, not passage, it came close to the 60 votes that are now required on 
every single measure that comes before the Senate. We came one vote 
short, and we still have no assurance of the ability to bring the bill 
up and to come to conclusion.
  Faith-based charities is another example of a bill that passed with 
90-plus votes. We can't go to conference. This was a bill that was 
bipartisan in nature. Senator Lieberman and I were sponsors of the 
legislation. There was no controversy surrounding it. Anything that was 
controversial was excised from the bill. Still we can't get the bill to 
conference to be able to get something that will infuse billions of 
dollars into charitable organizations across the country.
  Now we add to it asbestos care and jobs. We have this bill. Again, 
what is this about? What is this vote about? This is about discussing 
the bill. Is anyone in this Chamber saying there isn't a problem? There 
was a settlement that was just agreed to wherein the average person in 
Pennsylvania received $12,000, and the average claimant in Mississippi 
received $250,000 per person. Is this is a fair system, where people in 
Mississippi, because of a ridiculous court situation that goes on and 
the fraudulent court system in some counties in Mississippi, where 
lawyers have bought off the judiciary, that that is somehow or another 
a fair

[[Page S4241]]

system, that claimants in those communities should get more than 
someone who is similarly situated in another State?

  This is a situation that is crying out for Federal intervention. If 
we had this kind of discrimination going on in any other area, other 
than the fact that trial lawyers are involved, personal injury lawyers 
are involved, if we had any of this discrimination going on between 
States, both sides of the aisle would be screaming for a Federal 
solution. But when you have a situation where 50 percent of the money 
goes to lawyers and court costs and that money seems to finds its way 
back, interestingly enough, in the political system, then all of a 
sudden we don't mind discrimination between States.
  We don't mind if some States do very well under this lottery system 
that has evolved in these asbestos cases. We don't care if people who 
are sick and dying of mesothelioma get $10,000 in claims, and someone 
who walked through a construction site where there was asbestos, who is 
not sick, never will be sick, gets hundreds of thousands of dollars. We 
don't care, just as long as our buddies, the personal injury lawyers, 
get their cut. That is what is going on here.
  This is outrageous, with the severe problem we have in asbestos 
litigation, as severe a problem and as inequitable a situation as we 
have, as destructive to the economy as this is. Twenty-five percent of 
the companies that have gone bankrupt have gone bankrupt in 
Pennsylvania; 25 percent of those companies are Pennsylvania based.
  We have a company Senator Hatch talked about the other day, Crown 
Cork & Seal. Crown Cork & Seal makes bottle caps. If you opened up a 
Coke bottle, you used to have cork on the inside of the bottle cap. Now 
they have plastic. But they make plastic containers and bottle caps, 
all those things. They bought a bottling company in 1963, a cork 
company, as part of their growth. That company also had an insulation 
business. They owned the insulation business for 90 days--they never 
operated it--90 days in 1963. They spent $7 million on the acquisition. 
They have already paid out $400 million in claims on a business they 
never operated. What has that done? It has crippled that business. It 
is still surviving because it is a great company and it is still a 
world leader, but $400 million out of a bottom line of a company that 
never made the product, that owned it for 90 days and sold it as soon 
as they could find a buyer. They never operated the business and they 
still have tens of thousands of claims outstanding. This is wrong. If 
you want to talk about hurting manufacturers, I would like someone on 
the other side to stand up and say how this is fair to manufacturing.
  By the way, most of these claims and most of the money being paid out 
is going to lawyers, not people who are sick. Most of the claims are 
going to people who are not sick, not people who are sick, because most 
of the claims are filed by people who are not sick. This is an outrage, 
and we can't even discuss it here in the Senate. We can't even bring 
the bill up and have an amendment. We can't let the Senate work its 
will. I hear so much the complaint, if you just let the Senate work its 
will, bring these bills up. We can have a discussion. We have our 
message amendments that we want to do. But let's bring the bill up.
  Well, here we are. Let's bring the bill up. When it comes to our 
friends, the personal injury lawyers, we can't bring those bills up. We 
will bring up other bills but not when it comes to our buddies, the 
personal injury lawyers. Because it is a campaign season, we have 
campaigns to fund.
  This is an outrage. I don't want to hear any more complaints from the 
other side of the aisle about how manufacturing is in the doldrums when 
this particular bill could do more to stimulate capital investment in 
manufacturing and growth in the manufacturing sector and stop those 
companies from moving offshore. Why? Because they don't want these 
claims and the litigation environment--asbestos is probably the poster 
child for that--that they have to live with.
  We have an obligation to those who are sick to set up a fund so 
people who are sick, have health care expenditures, and are going 
through difficult times, who are disabled, get the resources they need 
and deserve as a result of being exposed to asbestos. We have an 
obligation. I can tell you the insurance companies, the manufacturers, 
are willing to put up over $100 billion to help people who are sick, 
and by the way, there is very little money for lawyers. That is the 
problem here. We are OK with the $100 billion or more for folks who are 
sick, but what about our friends, the lawyers? What are they going to 
do? How are they going to feed their families? Is that the real concern 
here?

  The concern in asbestos cases should be the people who are sick, not 
the lawyers who are making right now the lion's share of the money on 
this issue. That is what we are trying to get to here.
  All we are trying to do is discuss it. The bill that is before us I 
think puts $114 billion in the trust fund. I would be willing to 
continue to work on this point and see if we can get that money up 
higher. I am willing to look at all sorts of aspects of this bill to 
see if we can find a way to create a system to help people who are sick 
in this country as a result of exposure to asbestos and stop the 
bleeding of these people--the bleeding of these people--by personal 
injury lawyers who care more about their bottom line than helping 
people who are sick. If they really were concerned about people who are 
sick, there would not be tens of thousands of cases being filed in 
America today by people who are not sick because that money is being 
drained away from people who are sick to people who are not sick and to 
lawyers who are suing on their behalf.
  What is happening in this system is criminal, in my opinion, and for 
the Senate to say we simply do not want to discuss it is an outrage.
  I know the negotiations are continuing among labor, the insurance 
companies, and manufacturers, and I assume trial lawyers are involved, 
although probably objecting to everything, but we need to come to a 
conclusion.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Murkowski). The Senator's time has 
expired.
  Mr. SANTORUM. Madam President, we need to help those people who are 
sick, and we need to help them now.
  I thank the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wisconsin.

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